Discover Gardaland

Gardaland sits at Castelnuovo del Garda, about two kilometres inland from the lake and roughly ten minutes from Peschiera, on the low morainic hills at the southern end of the basin.

That ground is glacial debris -- the ridges the ice left when it retreated and the lake filled behind them -- and it is the same terrain the Bardolino vineyards grow on a little further north.

The site was farmland before 1975, and being off the shore is why a park of this size could be built at all: the lakefront itself was already developed, and there was no room on it.

Its position also explains the traffic. The park draws from the whole southern basin and funnels it onto the same roads that serve Peschiera and Lazise, which is why the southern shore is congested in a way the northern one is not.