The 13th-century Scaliger castle ruin, built by Veronese nobles, guards the only bridge into Sirmione with its crenellated turrets and towers. Now a resort town, Sirmione for a century served as a defense and control garrison for the ruling nobles. (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
The 13th-century Scaliger castle ruin, built by Veronese nobles, guards the only bridge into Sirmione with its crenellated turrets and towers. Now a resort town, Sirmione for a century served as a defense and control garrison for the ruling nobles. (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
Reports vary on the cleanliness of Lake Garda, with some suggesting pollutants of microplastics and bacteria and others claiming it pristine. In any case, it's beautiful and sparkling in the late afternoon. (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
In the early summer, duckings swim for their lives in Lake Garda. I noticed there were often seven ducklings in a ''raft.'' (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
Seafood, pasta, pizza, schnitzel are all on the menus at Sirmione's uniformly good restaurants. A simple spaghetti with meat sauce was one of my favorites. (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
Ristorante San Lorenzo, located in the heart of Sirmione's center, is always crowded, yet always able to seat patrons within a few minutes. Its excellent dishes of Italian standards and brisk, efficient service exemplifies Sirmione's mastery of the tourist trade. (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
The great opera singer Maria Callas lived at Sirmione for a time. Her house is marked with a plaque and across the street is a tranquil, shady park named for her. (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
Plants bloom profusely in Sirmione, including those within its various hotel gardens. (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
Summer mornings in Sirmione are usually clear, sunlit and supportive of everything wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow - or any alive human - holds dear. (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
Sirmione's old town blooms with flowering bushes and perfumed paths. One of the prettiest is this oleander-lined walkway into a little park with a playground. (Nancy Montgomery/Stars and Stripes)
Roman gifts to western civilization are many: arches, roads, plumbing, numerals, the republic, to name a few.
I would also add Sirmione.
The flower-strewn town at the southern tip of Italy’s largest lake seems to me the zenith of a resort, gracefully managing and pleasing its tourist hordes with the languorous aplomb of one of the good Roman emperors. Perhaps Hadrian, who from 117 to 138 not only built a wall in Britain but ruled over what historian Edward Gibbon wrote was the “happiest era of human history.”
What does one do in Sirmione, just an hour’s drive (without traffic) from the U.S. military base in Vicenza? Lounge on the hotel dock, reading a novel and repeatedly applying sunscreen. Swim in the cool, blue lake, among swans and baby ducks, then enjoy the feeling of the water evaporating off sun-warmed skin.
Eat spaghetti with seafood. Drink cold white wine and/or Aperol spritzes. Visit ancient ruins. Walk through olive groves and fragrant, sun-dappled parks. Notice masses of hydrangea, oleander and bougainvillea. Listen to a free concert of Elton John and samba songs. Get a massage. Take a boat trip. Try to figure out what your new Scottish friends are saying.
And repeat.
After spending a week doing that I was impressed at just how civilized, how cultivated the resort is. Despite the crowds that line up at the gelato shops and fill the restaurants, the spacious parks and ruins are uncrowded.
Everything is so clean, so manicured, so perfect. Yet the sound of leaf blowers or street sweepers never intrudes on that of birdsong or lapping waves; all that sweeping, pruning, cutting, collecting and cleaning is apparently done without motors.
One mishap — my dog tore his dewclaw and was limping painfully — was handled expertly. A veterinarian came to my hotel within an hour, clipped off the dangling nail and gave me antibiotic gel. She charged 50 euros, apologetically explaining, “Because it’s Sunday.”
Decades ago, Sirmione was a more upscale resort like those on Lake Como, and there is a five-star hotel where British Prime Minister Theresa May was recently rumored to have decamped after she resigned as Conservative party leader. But it’s mostly three-star hotels, patronized primarily by working- and middle-class Italians, Germans and Brits, along with numerous day-trippers. As such, it brought to the mind of a harried restaurant manager the so-called “happiest place on earth.”
“It’s like Disneyland now,” he said.
montgomery.nancy@stripes.com Twitter:@montgomerynance
