Stunning cycling route will loop around Lake Garda’s shoreline

The project is getting ever closer to realization

Lake Garda, in the Italian Alps, is one of the major tourist attractions in the country’s north. And it is about to get even more attractive to explore with the submission of a project that previews the construction of a cycling path, which will enclose its entire perimeter.

Three regions border the lake – Lombardy, Veneto and Trentino. Their governments submitted the project’s draft proposal, called Ciclovia del Garda, for approval to the Ministry of Sustainable Infrastructure and Mobility about two weeks ago.

There are bike path sections, but you can't ride around the entire lake just yet

The whole circuit will take step by step however, no definite timelines have been suggested for the completion. Garda’s cycling path is one of the 10 tourist cycling routes considered to be of national strategic interest, hence the inter-regional cooperation.

Lake Garda is internationally famous and the Ciclovia can only enhance its tourist vocation, offering a new opportunity to be put in place at the level of territorial marketing, explained Lombardy’s infrastructure commissioner Claudia Maria Terzi.

She added: “The Ciclovia will in fact improve sustainable mobility in the places bordering the lake. It will thus give a strong boost to cycling tourism - a growing phenomenon that must be encouraged through a functional and accurate infrastructure. 

The work of the Ciclovia will also be able to count on intermodality with other transport systems, in particular railways and lake transport, to encourage widespread use over long distances. In fact, I am convinced that the institutional collaboration with Veneto and Trentino will lead to important results for our regions".

Lombardy’s share in the cycling lane will be almost 50%, or 80 out of the 166 planned kilometres. The route will connect 14 municipalities on its territory. Veneto Region will build 67 kilometres and the Autonomous Province of Trento the remaining 20. The total cost of the project is estimated to be about 345 million euros.