Shared by three regions – Veneto, Lombardy, and Trentino Alto-Adige – and the largest lake in Italy, Lake Garda extends about thirty miles south from the foothills of the Dolomites. Shaped like an inverted ax, the narrow northern section of the lake funnels through sloping mountainsides and cliffside peaks for about twenty miles before collecting into a basin at its southern end.

Of the lake’s five islands, Isola del Garda is the largest. Located in Lombardy near the southwestern shore of the lake, it was chosen as the site of a Franciscan hermitage in the early thirteenth century. Expanding on the refuge, a convent and monastery were built and the island was an active religious community until the late seventeenth century.