Limonaia Toscolano

The lemon groves, buildings that overlook Lake Garda between Limone and Toscolano, were once an area of ​​excellence for the cultivation of oranges and lemons. The limonaia is a set of pillars leaning against the rock, enclosed in that thin strip of land located between the Gardesana road and the water of the Lake.

There are so many columns of an unfinished temple ... and instead they have their own meaning there, to protect the plants from the cold winter winds.It is said that the citrus fruits have arrived on the shores of the lake from the Ligurian Riviera and have found their place on the West Garda since the beginning of the 1600s.

One of the testimonies is found in the canonical of Limone: it is a 1658 painting depicting Saint Anthony the Abbot, with the pillars of the lemon groves on the bottom. But already in the mid-1400s some writers wrote "leafy branches of lemons and cedars" near Gargnano and it seems that it was the friars who cultivated the first citrus fruit gardens right there.

They are semi-enclosed structures on three sides, this to ensure the exposure of the plants to the south-east, ie completely towards the sun.