Peschiera del Garda – a walled city on the south bank of Lake Garda – was mentioned by Dante Alighieri in Canto XX of his “Inferno”, when the poet has Virgil describe the journey undertaken by Manto, a fortune-teller from Thebes and the daughter of the mythological prophet Tiresias.
After her father’s death, Manto traveled at length in Northern Italy, finally settling – to flee all human intercourse – on a land surrounded by swamps untilled and stripped of its inhabitants. According to the legend recalled by Dante, that was where Mantua was founded, named after Manto of course.
