The Visconti bridge at Borghetto is not a bridge: it is a fortified dam, built in the fourteenth century as part of the Serraglio defensive line, together with the Scaliger castle above the village. It was meant to close off the Mincio and the road in a single move. For a long time that is what Valeggio was, a ford to be watched: under today's built-up area a large Celtic necropolis still lies partly buried, and a little to the north the canalisation works of the nineteen-fifties brought to light a Bronze Age pile-dwelling village, along with sixteen thousand finds. On the banks of the Mincio, in the thirteenth century, the Templars also had a preceptory.
Then, in 1405, Venice arrived and the military role ended: Valeggio became a place of mills, fields and a silkworm market. About the church of San Pietro, built between 1760 and 1782, one thing is immediately clear: outside it is bare, because the marble cladding that had been planned was never put on — the money had run out first. Villa Sigurtà is of 1690, and in 1859 it became the headquarters of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph; the garden park once attached to it, now independent and sixty hectares in size, was named in 2013 the most beautiful park in Italy.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 23 April; the third Tuesday of June the Love Knot Festival on the Visconti bridge
Valeggio sul Mincio celebrates Saint George on 23 April; the third Tuesday of June hosts the Festa del Nodo d'Amore, with a table stretching across the entire 650-metre Visconti bridge, where the famous Valeggio tortellini are served to over four thousand diners.
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 Valeggio sul Mincio, but an easy day trip away.
