Grottoes of Catullus

Is it worth the trip?

Yes, if you are on Lake Garda. This is described as the most imposing Roman villa in northern Italy (it.wikipedia), and the setting does a lot of the work: tall Roman walls at the very tip of a peninsula, with the lake beyond. Go knowing what it is. You see the foundations of a vast house rather than its rooms, and the surviving fresco and stucco decoration is in the museum, not on the walls. The operator puts the shortest route round at about 40 minutes; with the museum and the views you will want longer. In 2013 it was the 27th most visited state site in Italy, with 215,961 visitors (it.wikipedia), so expect company.

Getting there

The site is at Piazzale Orti Manara, at the northern tip of the peninsula about 1 km beyond Sirmione’s town centre (the operator; OpenStreetMap). No public car park or bus stop is mapped close to the entrance. In summer a paid electric road train, run privately, goes from Piazza Piatti by the Terme di Catullo to the gate (the operator).

It opens Tuesday to Saturday 8.30 to 19.30, Sunday 10.00 to 19.30 and on Mondays only from 9.00 to 13.00, with last entry 40 minutes before closing; it is closed on 1 January and 25 December. A ticket is €10, or €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25, and under-18s go free; a €20 combined ticket, valid for seven days, adds the Scaliger Castle in Sirmione and the Roman villa at Desenzano. Bring a card: the operator says the single ticket cannot be paid in cash (Direzione regionale Musei Lombardia and the Ministry of Culture, read 19 October 2026 - check before travelling, since hours and prices change). The paths are gravel with steep stretches, and on very hot summer days the operator says to bring plenty of water.

History

Structures of the 1st century BC lie beneath the villa, which was built as a single planned project, laid out on a strict axis and symmetry, at the end of the 1st century BC or the start of the 1st century AD (it.wikipedia; the operator). Who owned it is not known. It has been suggested that it belonged to the Valerii, an aristocratic family of Verona (the operator; de.wikipedia), but not to the poet Catullus himself: Catullus (84-54 BC) had a house at Sirmione and wrote verses about returning to it, yet the villa visible today was built after his death, and nothing securely locates his house (the operator; it.wikipedia). A fresco fragment showing a man in a toga holding a scroll, kept in the museum, may be a portrait of him (the operator; de.wikipedia).

The villa was probably already abandoned in the 3rd century, when some of its architectural decoration was reused in Sirmione’s other Roman villa, on today’s Via Antiche Mura (it.wikipedia). In the 4th and 5th centuries parts of it were patched up and lived in again, a large cemetery grew up around it, and in the 5th century it became part of the defences built in the north of the peninsula (the operator). Lombard burials with grave goods have been found at the villa too, and the museum keeps stonework from Sirmione’s Lombard monastery of San Salvatore, including part of a carved screen dedicated to King Desiderius and his son Adelchis (the operator).

The name goes back to the 15th century, when Catullus’s poems were rediscovered; Marin Sanudo the Younger first attached the ruins to the poet in 1483, and Isabella d’Este (in 1514 and 1535) and Andrea Palladio, who came to study its building techniques, were among its 16th-century visitors (it.wikipedia). The first real study was made in 1801 by General Lacombe-Saint-Michel, an artillery commander in Napoleon’s army, and Count Giovanni Girolamo Orti Manara published his excavations and surveys in 1856 (it.wikipedia). The state archaeological service began a large programme of excavation and restoration in 1939 and bought the whole site in 1948 (it.wikipedia). More recently the ruins were one of the settings of the 2017 film Call Me by Your Name (en.wikipedia).