by Anne Calcagno

When I was growing up in Italy, it was nearly a mandate for well-heeled northerners to summer on the sun-warmed lakes at the foot of the Alps. Boats docked at island gardens, and people took slow promenades along the shore, followed by a leisurely Sunday meal on the leafy veranda of, say, Albergo Verbano, where Arturo Toscanini, George Bernard Shaw, and Ernest Hemingway once stayed.

The lakes' legacy goes back to the ancient Romans. Almost as old is the rivalry among them - Como, Garda, and Maggiore - for first place in the beauty pageant. Each lake boasts a Mediterranean microclimate cradled by soaring, snow-crusted Alps.

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Source: http://www.philly.com/