Sirmione, a Pretty Peninsula Town on Lake Garda, Sirmione, Italy

My first visit to Sirmione was on a lovely sunny, December day. This little town is situated on a promontory in the middle of the southern end of Lake Garda. This promontory is four kilometres long and as narrow as 109 metres in places. Visitors have to park outside the town and walk across a drawbridge and through a medieval gateway to enter the town itself. In the summer crowds flock here by road and water as regular ferries criss-cross the lake. In the winter, when the ferries do not run, the town is very quiet. Before I reached the entrance to the town a boatman hailed me from his boat bobbing on the water below us. He offered us a trip around the peninsula. It was the perfect start my tour.

Sirmione has been settled since the Stone Age when fishermen probably lived in houses on stilts on the banks of the lake. The Romans also came here attracted not only by the beauty of the place but also by the healing properties of the thermal waters that bubble up from the bed of the lake. We had not gone far before we were able to see the bubbles rising to the surface. On the shore we could see the steam from these waters that are carried by a pipeline to a large spa on the shoreline. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).