Torri del Benaco Geography

Halfway up the eastern shore, the broad southern basin of the lake gives way to a narrow trench between mountains, and Torri sits at the hinge. Behind it rises Monte Baldo, the ridge that runs the length of this shore and separates the lake from the Adige valley.

Monte Baldo is unusual enough botanically to have been called the Hortus Europae — the garden of Europe — since the sixteenth century. It escaped the worst of the ice ages, so species survived on its slopes that were scoured from the surrounding lowlands, and the climb from lakeshore to ridge passes through several climate zones in a few kilometres.

The lake does the rest. A body of water this size holds its heat and releases it slowly, keeping the shoreline mild enough for olives and cypress — and, with a roof over them each winter, for lemons. The limonaia exists because of that margin, and because the margin was not quite wide enough on its own.