The origins of the castle of Lazise dates back to the ninth century, when the inhabitants of the village erected the first defenses to protect themselves from the invasions of the Hungarians, completed at the end of the next century, as evidenced by the privilege granted in 983 by the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Brass II, in which he gave the faculty to the local population to complete their defenses.
In 1193 the castle and the village passed under the government of the Free Municipality of Verona and then a few years later, under the Lordship of the Scaligers, which in the city had become concentrated in their hands the power: Albert II and Mastino della Scala in 1329 restructured the walls of the village, intervallandole by about twenty scudate towers, while the reconstruction of the castle was begun by Cansignorio in 1375 and finished by Antonio and Bartholomew II in 1381; Lazise thus became a stronghold of the excheckr western fortified veronese.
The lacustrine village of Lazise is equipped of a good part of the walls of which has been lost only the northern part of the eastern Cortina and the part of the west curtain that, starting from the castle, continued along the lake to the porto antico, ending in the disappearance torre del Cadenon, eliminated in 1939 to make room for the monument to the fallen, but whose figure has remained in the memory of the Community lacisiense much to continue to exist in the popular celebration known as the Palio della Cuccagna of Cadenon, that takes place every year in precisely those areas where stood the medieval tower.
The fortress real was built between 1375 and 1381, thus belongs to a series of defensive works started by Cansignorio and concluded by the last two Scaligeri, Antonio and Bartholomew II della Scala. It consists of two adjacent fences: a rectangular cortina largest, used as a military port, on the side toward the lake and a smallest rectangular, the Piazza d’armi, on the side toward the hinterland: both the curtains are separated by six scudate towers, with masonry times that sustain the crenellated terraces and wooden structures which support the intermediate planes; there are four angular towers and two intermediate placed on the long side, surrounded both toward the campaign that toward the inhabited by a large moat with controscarpa in masonry and, on the side campaign, also from a controfossa. There are two entrances to the castle, one toward the countryside and one toward the city, both protected by a gatehouse equipped with double doors and a drawbridge on moat. Moreover, in order to offer greater defense of the castle, to the sides of the gatehouse toward campaign a second curtain wall was spread, slightly lower than the main one.
Particularly imposing donjon of the castle in brick, with a base top two meters in stone and a crown formed by a hanging structure crenellated tower with machicolation archeggiature on which discharge their weight on a threefold shelf sloping in stone. This last element of defense could be accessed from rampart walk through a small drawbridge: from the plane reached you could then descend through trapdoors prisons, or via stairs climb to the overhanging floors. At the base of the donjon, inside the Piazza d’armi, they raised a time the residence of the Castellano and the barracks of the militia, close to the city walls.
The romantic park designed by Count Buri takes place as a path around the castle, single great episode that marks the way, without other elements of surprise. Of the original essences many still survive today: are particularly significant for their size and beauty, a wellingtonia, a sequoia and two copies of the Magnolia grandiflora, which have a dimension such that their foliage blend, creating a green gallery under which unwinds the path. On margins de la mara, in the southern portion of the garden, grow instead numerous deciduous trees, as horse chestnut, Platani, limes, hop hornbeams, elms and oaks, while the undergrowth contains maples, hawthorns, pitosfori, laurels, rates and Bossi, rejuvenated by the waters of the brook that collects the waters of the hills that surround Lazise and that, precisely in the park of the villa, converge in the lake.
