Lazise Geography

Lake Garda is the largest lake in Italy, and it changes character along its length. The northern end is a narrow trench between cliffs; the southern end, where Lazise is, is broad and open, ringed by the low morainic hills pushed up by the glacier that gouged the basin and then retreated.

That geology is why this shore is farmed rather than scaled. The hills behind the town carry vines and olives, and the stretch of coast from Bardolino down to Peschiera is called the Riviera degli Olivi for the reason you would expect.

The lake itself is the climate. A body of water that size holds its temperature and releases it slowly, which keeps winters mild enough for olives, cypress and citrus to grow at a latitude that should not support them — the same effect, on a larger scale, that the lemon houses further north were built to exploit.