One of the largest towns on the Venetian shore and centre of the densest concentration of camping and caravan parks. Its red roofs cluster beneath the clean lines of a 14thC fort and watch-tower built, as were most of the defences of this eastern shore, by the Scaliger lords of Verona. A cable car goes 3 km inland to a summit of the Monte Baldo ridge at 1,752 m, where you’ll find a refuge, ski slope and café. Tremendous panoramas from this spot, over both lake and Adige valley.

Here you can marvel at the daring, or desperation, of the 15thC Venetian military command. Lake Garda had fallen into Lombard hands. A frontal assault from the south was ruled out. Instead the Venetian commander sailed warships up the Adige, drew them with teams of oxen across the mountain and re-launched them on the lake. The effort deserved better success: the Lombards sank all his ships or drove them on to the rocks. Four centuries later the Austrians maintained a flotilla of warships on Lake Garda and, in the run-up to Italian independence in the 19thC, they were far from idle. Cannon-balls embedded in the walls of lakeside cottages (you can see a few at Gargnano, this section, are souvenirs of attacks on Garibaldi’s troops.