A dry summer in 2022 and a winter with little rain – the water level in Lake Garda is very low.
02/28/2023 | 02:15 min “It’s a bit like walking on water,” says Afra Vorhauser happily after a walk across a newly discovered land bridge to the island of San Biagio in Lake Garda. The historic winter drought that northern Italy has been suffering for months is bringing a new type of tourism to Lake Garda. The water level this winter is up to 60 centimeters below the average level of the last few decades.
“It’s a beautiful sight, but sad at the same time because it’s caused by the drought,” says Albert Pampuri, who cycled here from Brescia with his wife and two friends. “We hope it doesn’t stay that way for too long,” added the 62-year-old.
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Narrow path to the island
Like Vorhauser and Pampuri, visitors flock to walk or cycle along the narrow path that now connects San Biago Island to the coast. The island, with its cypress trees and rocky white sand beaches, was once accessible only by boat.
The unusual phenomenon is reminiscent of wrapping artist Christo’s “Floating Piers” installation, which had piers covered in yellow fabric floating near Lake Iseo in 2016. “But those were artificial bridges, whereas this is a natural work of art,” he says. teacher Agata Carteri, 48 years old.
“Floating Parents” by Christo Source: epa
Five years ago, Matteo Fiori walked to San Biagio with his backpack on his head. “The water was up to my chest, it was an adventure”, recalls the 45-year-old social worker as he and his family look out over the land bridge. All around, families have picnics on the grass, children climb the rocks on the beach.
new type of tourism
“The curiosity to see things that are normally covered by water” is enabling a new kind of tourism, says Paolo Artelio, head of the local tourist agency VisitGarda. These include the Caves of Catullus, the ruins of a Roman villa on the Sirmione peninsula, now partially exposed thanks to low water levels.
The combination of little snow in the surrounding mountains, warm temperatures and six weeks without rain has seen Lake Garda’s water level drop to its lowest level in 30 years. After a record drought last summer that destroyed crops, warning signs such as low water levels in the Po, Lake Maggiore and Lake Como are appearing once again in northern Italy. The lack of snow is also a concern for ski resorts.
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But the small community of Manerba del Garda benefits from the new land bridge to San Biagio. “The island has become a popular off-season attraction,” says Mayor Flaviano Mattioti. “But if the water level doesn’t rise, we’ll have to dredge the ports so that tourist boats can dock. It would be a first.”
Almost 28 million tourists visit Lake Garda every year, 40% of them coming from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Representatives of the authorities attach importance to the fact that nothing changes for tourists for the time being. Lake Garda is still 136 meters deep on average, says Pierlucio Ceresa, general secretary of the Association of Lake Garda Municipalities. Tourists could “surf, sail and swim as they pleased”. It was “premature to declare a catastrophe”. If it rains in the coming weeks, “the situation will normalize”.
Source: Brigitte Hagemann, AFP