Malcesine

People have lived in the area since prehistory, and the first recorded inhabitants, around 500 BC, are thought to have been Etruscans. After Tiberius defeated the Rhaetians in 15 BC the area passed to Rome, and after Rome's fall to Ostrogoths, Alemanni and Lombards. The Lombards built a castle on the rock in the 5th or 6th century; the Franks destroyed it in 590, rebuilt it, and in 806 King Pepin stayed there. The name first appears in 844 as Manessicelles; its meaning is uncertain.

After Hungarian raids the castle passed to the bishops of Verona, and in 1277 to Alberto della Scala, whose family held it until 1387 and gave it its name. The Visconti of Milan followed, then the Republic of Venice from 1405 to 1797, interrupted only by imperial rule under Maximilian I in 1506–16. From 1618 the Palazzo dei Capitani housed the Capitano del Lago, head of the Gardesana dell'Acqua, a self-governing territory under Venice. Napoleon's troops came in 1797–98, then Austria, which turned the castle into a garrison, and in 1866 Malcesine joined Italy.

In September 1786 Goethe was questioned as a suspected Austrian spy after sketching the castle, an episode he told in his Italian Journey. Tourism grew along the Gardesana Orientale road that follows the Veronese shore, and after the Second World War a polio rehabilitation centre opened in a lakeside villa. Since then the town has become one of the lake's best-known resorts.

Malcesine's identity is tied to the lake and the mountain. Sailing is the oldest and most practised sport, thanks to the dependable winds of the upper lake: five local sailors have competed at the Olympics, from Munich in 1972 to Paris in 2024. Italy's first windsurfing school opened here in 1976, kitesurfing followed, and paragliders use the height above the lake for acrobatics. The town hosted rounds of the Red Bull Cliff Diving world series in 2011 and 2013.

Goethe is the town's adopted hero. Plaques mark where he sat to draw the castle, and since 2004 a room in the castle, created with the Casa di Goethe museum in Rome, has displayed his drawings of the lake and the castle, with a bronze bust on one of its terraces. Malcesine belongs to the association of the most beautiful villages of Italy.

Religious tradition remains strong. In February the parish church holds the Triduo, three days of prayer for the dead, lit by hundreds of candles, with Perosi's Miserere sung by the local choir. On 26 July a procession honours the co-patrons, Saints Benigno and Caro, followed by the Sant'Anna festival on the beach and fireworks over the castle. In summer the Teatro Lacaor, a natural arena at the foot of the castle, stages concerts, and the town organises a children's choir competition in alternate years.

About 3,500 people live in the comune, spread from Navene in the north through Malcesine itself to Cassone in the south. The territory climbs from the lake at 89 metres to the crest of Monte Baldo at 2,218 metres, and the town is the northernmost comune on the Veneto shore of the lake, bordering both Trentino and Lombardy across the water.

The economy is mainly tourism — hotels, campsites, restaurants, boat services, sailing and windsurf schools, mountain-bike hire and the cable car — with some farming, chiefly olive oil, and livestock. Olive growing has shrunk since the second half of the 20th century, as tourism drew people from the land and the cost of tending terraces and harvesting rose. Since the late 1940s the town has also had a hospital, which began as a rehabilitation centre for polio and grew into an orthopaedic and rehabilitation hospital at Val di Sogno.

Life follows the seasons. From spring to autumn the town is crowded with visitors, and the shore road is busy. In winter the town is quiet, many businesses close, and residents look to the Monte Baldo ski runs, among the few on Lake Garda.

Malcesine's food belongs to the Veronese shore of Lake Garda, where the mild climate allows olive trees, vines and even lemons to grow far further north than usual. Olive oil is the defining local product: groves are documented from the 9th and 10th centuries, and in the Middle Ages much of the oil was used to light church lamps. Today it remains the town's main farm product.

The town's characteristic dish is polenta carbonera, a hearty dish from the Valle del Chiese that arrived over Monte Baldo; in Malcesine it is made with olive oil instead of butter. As elsewhere in the Veneto, polenta and rice are staples, and the cheeses of the Veronese mountains, such as Monte Veronese, are common.

The lake supplies fish, among them the rare carpione, a salmonid found only in Lake Garda and now endangered by overfishing and pollution. The local wine is Bardolino, a red from the morainic hills east of the lake, named after the lakeside town further south.