Val Camonica

Description

In Dante's topography, Val Camonica is mentioned in Canto XX of the Inferno (v. 65), in a passage in which Virgil indicates the geographical boundaries of Lake Garda: the town of Garda lies on the eastern shore of the lake, while Val Camonica, traversed by the river Oglio, extends to the west in a direction parallel to that same lake basin. The critical note on the verse specifies that the two references, Garda and Val Camonica, function as an elliptical determination of place, useful for circumscribing the space in which the mountain range indicated by the name Pennino or Apennino is situated, from which the river Sarca rises that feeds Lake Benaco. The context is that of the geographical digression with which Virgil opens the episode of Manto, moving the gaze from the borders with Germania down the peninsula as far as Mantua.