Sirmio is a
promontory
A promontory is a raised mass of land that projects into a lowland or a body of water (in which case it is a peninsula). Most promontories either are formed from a hard ridge of rock that has resisted the erosive forces that have removed the so ...
at the southern end of
Lake Garda,
projecting 3.3 kilometers (2.1 mi) into the
lake. It is celebrated in connection with the Roman poet
Catullus, as the large ruins of a
Roman villa known as the
Grottoes of Catullus
Grottoes of Catullus is the name given to the ruins of a Roman villa built between the end of the 1st century BC and the beginning of the 1st century AD at the northernmost end of the Sirmione peninsula on the southern shore of Lake Garda.
The ...
on the promontory have been supposed to be his
country house
An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...
. Catullus, upon his return home from a long voyage, joyously describes Sirmio as ''Paene insularum, Sirmio, insularumque ocelle'' ("Sirmio, jewel of peninsulas and of islands") in his Carmen XXXI, ''Ad Sirmionem insulam''.
A post station bearing the name Sirmio stood on the highroad between Brixia (modern
Brescia) and
Verona, near the southern shore of the lake. On the shore below is the village of
Sirmione, with
sulfur
Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...
baths.
In 1880, the poet
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
, visited what he called "Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio" in his poem "Frater Ave Atque Vale", the title referring to the last line of a famous
elegy of Catullus, on the death of his brother.
References
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Headlands of Italy
{{Lombardy-geo-stub