Lake Garda and Verona

Lake Garda is the largest lake in Italy, and it is really two lakes joined together. The northern end is narrow and steep, a long finger of water pushed deep into the Alps between mountain walls, where the wind gets up every afternoon and the sails of windsurfers flicker across it. The southern end opens out into a broad, gentle basin among low hills, vineyards and olive groves, so wide that on a hazy day the far shore disappears and it looks like the sea.

Between them, the shores are lined with small towns, each with a harbour, a promenade and a castle or a church tower, and ferries link them all. It makes a lake that suits almost everyone: walkers and cyclists in the north, families and wine lovers in the south, and people who simply want to sit by the water with a glass of something cold.

The north and the east shore

At the top of the lake, Riva del Garda and Torbole sit at the foot of the mountains, where the lake's steady winds have made them centres for sailing and windsurfing. The morning wind blows down the lake from the north, and the afternoon wind, the Ora, blows back up it from the south, as regular as a timetable. Arco, a few kilometres inland, has a castle on a crag above olive groves and a reputation among rock climbers.

On the western shore, Limone sul Garda is a village of steep lanes squeezed onto a ledge below cliffs, and it is known for its lemon houses, the limonaie, terraces of stone pillars and wooden frames where citrus fruit was once grown this far north in the Alps. Across the water on the eastern shore, Malcesine is a pretty harbour town under a castle, and a cable car rises from it up the long ridge of Monte Baldo, from whose top the whole lake lies below.

Sirmione and the south

At the southern end, the narrow peninsula of Sirmione runs out into the lake for several kilometres. At its base stands the Rocca Scaligera, a moated castle of the Scaliger lords of Verona, its swallowtail battlements rising straight out of the water, and the way into the old town runs past its gate. At the very tip are the ruins of a great Roman villa, traditionally linked with the poet Catullus, who wrote fondly of Sirmione; its arches and terraces look out over the water.

Bardolino, on the eastern shore, gives its name to a light red wine, and the vineyards behind it run back into the hills of the Valpolicella, Soave and the rest of the Veneto's wine country.

Verona

Verona lies half an hour east of the lake, on a loop of the River Adige, and it is a handsome city of pink and cream stone. Its centre is the Arena, a Roman amphitheatre of pink stone built in the first century AD and still in use. Since 1913 it has been home to an opera festival in summer, when audiences sit on the old stone tiers as the light fades and the stage fills with the crowds and spectacle of Aida or Carmen.

Beyond the Arena are the Piazza delle Erbe, the old market square, the Roman theatre across the river, and, inevitably, Juliet's house, with its balcony and a long queue. The balcony, it should be said, was added in the twentieth century, but Verona has made Shakespeare's story its own, and nobody seems to mind.

Holidays that go there

Explore's seven-night Cycle Dolomites, Lake Garda and Verona joins the mountains, the lake and the city: its places include Merano, Bolzano, Lake Caldaro and Trento, then Arco, Torbole and Riva del Garda, Limone, Malcesine and Garda, and Verona. It departs in May, June, September and October.

Just You's seven-night Discover Venice and the Veneto, for solo travellers, combines Venice, Bassano del Grappa, Marostica, Vicenza, Verona, Sirmione, Bardolino and Soave with the mountain villages of Fiera di Primiero and San Martino di Castrozza.

Travelsphere's seven-night A Taste of Italy's Veneto takes in Venice, Bassano del Grappa, Marostica, Maser, Asolo, the Euganean Hills, Padua, Lake Garda, Bardolino, Soave and Vicenza.

If you are going for the opera, book well ahead and take a cushion; the stone gets hard by the third act.