Peschiera del Garda

Here the river was rebuilt around the town. The Mincio, the outlet of Lake Garda, leaves precisely at Peschiera, and the building of the walled town surrounded by water changed its natural course: to make defence possible, three outlet branches were cut from the lake, which then rejoin south of the built-up area. Rome called it Arilica, a name of Celtic origin, and it was a vicus; Pliny the Elder tells of the abundance of the catch there where the water leaves the lake towards the river, and it seems that from that fortune comes the coat of arms too, two silver eels with a gold star. Between the eighth and the ninth century Arilica changed its name to Peschiera, and in the Lombard documents there appear a royal fishing court and the grande pischaria donated by king Rachis. The most important stretch of the walls was raised from 1549 to a design by Guidobaldo della Rovere, duke of Urbino, with contributions also from Michele Sammicheli and Anton Maria Lorgna: since 9 July 2017 the fortress has been a world heritage site among the Venetian works of defence.

Being a military town, however, had its price. The military servitudes, ever heavier, strangled the economy and pushed it into narrower and narrower channels: the evidence of a supplication of 1589 remains. In 1815, with the Congress of Vienna, Peschiera passed to the Lombardo-Veneto kingdom under the province of Mantua and entered the defensive system of the Quadrilatero; it was conquered by the Piedmontese on 30 May 1848, but became Italian only in 1866, with the treaty of Prague, and by triangulation: Austria ceded the Veneto to France, which immediately passed it to Italy. Yet it was the reinforcement of the bastions that made archaeology a gift: from 1851, working on the walls, the pile-dwelling villages of the lake came to light, at least seven of them are recognised, and a late phase of the Bronze Age has taken the name of this place. The sites of Belvedere and of the lake of Frassino have been world heritage since 2011.