Water surrounds Peschiera on every side, and that was the whole idea. The town sits where the River Mincio flows out of the southern end of Lake Garda, and in the sixteenth century the Republic of Venice turned it into a star-shaped fortress with massive pentagonal walls, bastions and moats fed by the lake and the river. Later the Austrians made it one of the four corners of the Quadrilatero, the defensive square of fortresses that guarded their hold on northern Italy in the nineteenth century. In 2017 Peschiera became part of the UNESCO listing of Venetian works of defence between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, alongside Bergamo, Palmanova and fortresses on the Adriatic.
Walking around the walls, crossing the bridges over the canals and watching the boats slip out onto the lake, you get a vivid sense of a town that was built to resist cannon fire. Today the old barracks house shops and restaurants, the harbour is full of pleasure craft, and the lakeside promenade is lively on summer evenings.
The riding around Peschiera is a game of two halves. The lake roads, especially the Gardesana along the eastern shore, are beautiful but very crowded in summer, with slow traffic, buses, cyclists and pedestrians. South of the lake, the Mincio valley is a much quieter delight: gentle hills covered with vineyards, small roads through villages and the medieval village of Borghetto, with its fortified bridge and mills, just below Valeggio sul Mincio. Valeggio is famous for its tortellini, small hand-made pasta known locally as nodi d'amore, love knots.
Peschiera has fuel, shops and food in abundance. The local white wine is Lugana, made from vineyards on the southern shore of the lake, fresh and mineral, a perfect match for lake fish. Try grilled lavarello or perch fillets with risotto. Amusement parks nearby attract big crowds in summer, so expect traffic jams on the main roads at weekends.
Come out of season if you can, in spring or late September, when the lake is calm, the hills green or golden and the crowds thinner. Walk the walls at sunset, when the light turns the water pink and the fortress glows warm, and you will see why so many armies wanted this place.