Visit the city Peschiera sul Garda

Peschiera is the most central location of the entire lake. Tourist information about apartments, camping and hotels for your holidays to lake Garda, Italy.

Peschiera del Garda has about 8700 inhabitants and lies at the confluence of the Mincio River that is the lake’s only stream flow. The city is considered to be the most central of the entire lake, on the one hand for its closeness to the River Po Plane, on the other for the many amusement parks in its vicinity. This prominent situation as geographic and cultural crossing point made Peschiera, inhabited since the prehistory by the pile dwellers, one of the most important towns of the lake.
Plinius the Older tells in his Naturalis Historia of Peschiera being called Arilica during the Roman Empire and trading with fish and agricultural products. In the course of the emigration of nations the name changed from Ardelica to Pischeriae to Piscaria to today’s Peschiera.
Peschiera was early fortified and reigned by different emperors like Charles the Great who gave Saint Martin of Tours the Piscaria Coast, or Berengar of Tours who fortified and amplified the fortress. By the 12th century the first free towns had emerged under which Peschiera was too that soon after that came under Friedrich I Barbarossa’s domination.
Peschiera was then reigned by several dynasties like the Scaligeri, the Scala that supposedly had Dante Alighieri amongst his guests, and, from 1387 on, the Visconti, and finally from 1440 on it was the Republic of Venice’s turn.
In 1815, after the Vienna Congress, Peschiera came under Austrian domination. It was then part of the so called “Quadrilatero” with Mantua, Verona and Legnago. In the period until 1861, the end of the Italian War of Independence, Peschiera was the setting of numerous battles. In 1866 the whole Venetian Region got incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy.