Fifty kilometres of Veronese shoreline, from Peschiera del Garda to Malcesine, with Torri del Benaco at its heart. It is called the Riviera degli Ulivi — the Olive Riviera — and the name is neither poetic licence nor a tourist slogan. It is a description of a landscape that has existed for millennia, shaped by nature and human hands in an extraordinary balance. The lake’s mild, almost Mediterranean microclimate — created by the vast mass of water that regulates temperatures throughout the year — has allowed olive trees to thrive here at unusually northern latitudes. In fact, the province of Verona holds the record for being the northernmost territory in the world where olives can be cultivated and oil produced. A record that, once you know it, changes the way you look at the hills around Torri.
Two Thousand Years of History Among the Olive Branches
Olive cultivation on Lake Garda has its roots in the Etruscan era, but it was the Romans who professionalised and systematically expanded it. For them, olive oil was far more than a food — it was medicine, a beauty product and a spiritual essence, used in lamps, thermal baths and religious rituals. In the Middle Ages, Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries took over from the Roman estates, tending the olive trees with dedication and making oil production a central part of monastic life. Many of the olive presses that still exist today date back to this period. In the small villages around the lake, ancient gnarled olive trees can still be found, some of them over a thousand years old — living witnesses to a deeply rooted culture. The value of oil was such that in 643 AD an edict imposed severe penalties on anyone caught damaging olive trees along the lake’s shores, and in the early Middle Ages four to six kilograms of Garda olive oil were worth as much as a large pig. It was during the Renaissance that the landscape took on the form we still admire today: the hillsides were reshaped with elaborate dry-stone terraces — true constructions overlooking the lake — making this territory so distinctive that in 1968 it officially became known as the Riviera degli Ulivi.
The Landscape of the Terraces
Those who walk among the olive groves of Torri del Benaco see before them the result of centuries of patient work. The dry-stone walls supporting the terraces, the rows of silver-green olive trees swaying in the breeze, the narrow paths climbing toward Albisano with the lake spreading wider and wider in the background — it is one of the most authentic and least photographed landscapes on Lake Garda. The stretch between Torri and Brenzone is considered one of the most beautiful on the entire Riviera: the olive trees, with their gnarled trunks and silvery leaves, look like living sculptures, particularly magical in the evening light, when the sun turns the lake to gold and the leaves shimmer. Over two hundred varieties of olive trees grow here, with the typical cultivar of the Veronese shore — the ‘casaliva’ — dominating and defining the character of every bottle of oil produced in this area.
The Green Gold of Garda: DOP Olive Oil
The oil that comes from these trees is today one of the most prized in Italy. The Garda Orientale DOP stands out for its deep green colour, its delicate fruity aroma and a subtle flavour with notes of sweet almond, artichoke and rosemary — unique characteristics that derive from the lake’s microclimate and the quality of the hillside soils. It is still processed in the traditional way, with a gentle cold pressing immediately after harvest, to preserve its flavour, vitamins and polyphenols. It ranks among the top five Italian DOP olive oil designations and is exported and awarded prizes around the world. The best time to taste it is in autumn, during the Rassegna dell’Olio Novello in Castelletto di Brenzone — an authentic celebration where you can sample freshly pressed oil and discover the secrets of its cultivation. But it can be found all year round in the local olive presses and shops of the Veronese shore villages.
The Riviera degli Ulivi is not something to be admired only from the lakeside promenade — it is a territory to be explored on foot or by bicycle, getting lost among the terraces and inland villages. Torri del Benaco is the perfect starting point. Ask at reception: we will be happy to suggest the most beautiful routes through the olive groves and the oil presses not to be missed.
