Getting Married on Lake Garda

Lake Garda is Italy's largest lake and its most versatile wedding destination — a thirty-mile sweep of water that begins in gentle vineyard hills and ends beneath Alpine cliffs. The south offers thermal Sirmione on its narrow peninsula and the wine country of Lugana; the west climbs through the lemon terraces of Limone and the belle-époque gardens of Gardone Riviera; the north, at Riva and Malcesine, feels almost like a fjord. Few destinations put this much variety within one hour of a single airport.

The southern shore is soft morainic hill country — vineyards, olive groves and cypress avenues rolling down to beaches at Desenzano, Peschiera and Bardolino. Moving north the lake narrows and steepens: Monte Baldo rises above Malcesine on the eastern shore, and on the west the cliffs of the Alto Garda park drop straight to the water. Sirmione's peninsula, tipped by the Scaliger castle and the Roman ruins of the Grotte di Catullo, is the lake's most famous image.

Garda's shores collect layers of history: Roman villas at Sirmione and Desenzano, the Scaliger fortresses of Verona's medieval lords at Sirmione, Malcesine and Torri del Benaco, Venetian ports on the eastern shore, and the eccentric Vittoriale degli Italiani at Gardone — Gabriele d'Annunzio's extraordinary hillside estate. Isola del Garda, the lake's private island with its Venetian neo-Gothic villa, remains one of northern Italy's most coveted event settings.

The lake has its own kitchen: lavarello and sardine di lago from the water, carpione marinades, and pasta dressed with Garda DOP olive oil — grown further north than almost any other olive in the world. The south is serious wine country: Lugana's mineral whites, Bardolino and its pale Chiaretto rosé, and the Valtènesi reds of the western hills. Limone's terraced lemon houses supply the citrus that scents everything from aperitivi to wedding cakes.