We arrived late, weighed down with luggage, having navigated a train, a bus, and a walk we hadn’t planned for. Then we found the castello. All of it was immediately worth it.
Sirmione doesn’t have its own train station. The closest is Desenzano del Garda, and from there you need a bus to Colombare — then a walk into Sirmione itself. We had the trains wired by this point in the trip. The bus was another matter.
We waited on what we hoped was the right side of the road, at what we hoped was the right stop, with very little Italian and even less cash. When the bus eventually appeared and took us exactly where we’d asked, it felt like a minor victory. We walked the rest of the way into town with cases and rucksacks, tired in the way that only a full day of Italian travel can produce.
The reward was Alexandra Stay Sirmione — a lovely little hotel with, most importantly, a pool. A proper glowing turquoise pool that we admired at length before freshening up and heading straight back out in search of food.
It was late. Early signs on the food front were not encouraging — most places had closed or were closing. We wandered through the newer part of town, past the marble-floored arcade and the ceramic shop windows full of extraordinary hand-painted work, and kept walking toward the old town.
Then the castello came into view.
The Castello Scaligero sits at the tip of the Sirmione peninsula, its medieval walls rising directly out of the lake. At night, floodlit against the black water, it stops you mid-step. We had been walking through a pleasant lakeside town. Suddenly we were somewhere medieval and genuinely dramatic.
We found Hotel Broglia still serving — one of those moments where a single open restaurant feels like an act of grace. The server was warm and unhurried despite the hour, the red gingham tablecloths were exactly right, and I had seafood linguine that justified every heavy step with the luggage. Sarah watched it arrive with a look that required no translation. There was also a beer that could fairly be described as the size of my head. We needed it.
After dinner, we explored properly. The old town at night has a particular quality — narrow cobbled streets, closed gelaterie, the occasional archway framing something old and stone beyond it. The Casa Scaligeri. The lanes that open onto the lakeside. The wooden pontoon bridge with its flowers still vivid even in the dark.
Then we found the light show. Geometric projections across the castle walls — white lines tracing the battlements, outlining towers — the kind of thing that makes an already extraordinary building feel slightly unreal.
Sarah stood in front of the castle and looked up at it for a long time.
The piazza was still busy — palm trees, a crescent moon, groups of people gathered in the way Italians gather on warm evenings, in no particular hurry. The Hotel Villa Cortine gates glowed at the far end of the peninsula, improbably grand. A tree-lined avenue stretched quietly beyond.
1.13 miles. 2,646 steps. Half an hour on the clock, starting at eleven at night. But we had found the castello, found dinner, and found a place that was already promising something extraordinary for the morning.
The water was out there somewhere in the dark. We could hear it.