On 7 May 983 the emperor Otto II replied with a diploma to the men of Lazise, who had asked to be allowed to fortify their castrum: he granted them the walls, the collection of certain tolls, rights of transit and rights of fishing. From that year the town governed itself by vicinia, an assembly of eighteen heads of family with wide civil, economic and even religious autonomy, and for this reason Lazise is considered the first free comune in Italy. The emperor's reasons were in fact practical: there was a wide meadow here where the imperial army could camp, and the town was an excellent place to supply it from.
That freedom it held on to. In 1077 Henry IV confirmed the exemptions, in a private deed of 1123 Lazise is for the first time called Patria, and when in 1193 Verona took Garda and the whole Garda judicature, the town kept its ancient privileges all the same. Today the reckoning is made differently: about three and a half million official visitor nights a year, the twelfth tourist destination in Italy and the first among lake destinations, between the little harbour, the thermal springs of Colà and the amusement parks. The town that got its walls because an army needed a field.
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📅 Every year, on 11 November; in summer the Regata delle Bisse and the Festa dell'Ospite
Lazise celebrates Saint Martin on 11 November, in the Church of Santi Zenone e Martino. Among the popular events are the Regata delle Bisse and the Festa dell'Ospite, with an 8-metre pole laid horizontally over the harbour waters.
Eight points, powdered sugar like snow on a mountain: pandoro was born in Verona in 1894, patented by Domenico Melegatti.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Lazise, but an easy day trip away.
