Already in Roman times, particularly starting from the early imperial age, magnificent villas were present on the shores of the lake conceived as places dedicated to the otium, a de facto activity reserved to the dominant classes, and to leisure, due to the happy naturalness of the site. In particular, Sirmione was a privileged place for the presence of sulfur springs that allowed thermal use, in fact here are the archaeological remains of a Roman villa known as the Grotte di Catullo, one of the most important Roman testimonies on the lake. Starting from the Renaissance, the shores returned to be populated by noble villas, conceived as urban facts to counteract the countryside, making the lake, and especially the north-western area, the destination of an elite tourism, but tourism in the modern conception of term developed from the end of the nineteenth century, although, obviously, it was still an elitist tourism that concerned almost exclusively the north-western area of the lake, "for the goodness of the climate, for abundance of water, for variety of products , for grandeur and playfulness of landscape, courtesy of inhabitants ". One of the first tourist resorts was Gardone Riviera, where Luigi Wimmer, in love with the place, decided to build a small hotel, which was completed after his death by his wife: expanded over time, it became one of the buildings that made up the luxurious Grand Hotel Gardone Riviera. In its proximity other small hotels and villas slowly arose and, after the vate Gabriele D'Annunzio had the Vittoriale degli Italiani built here, the fame of the place increased further. From the second post-war period tourism had a sort of transformation: to a tourism with a long stay the "hit and run" tourism was added, with a short stop, for the weekend only or even for a few hours. The first is fed by tourists who want to spend their holidays on the lake, coming from a vast area (besides Italians, numerous Germans, French, Swiss, Dutch and other foreigners), while the second is fed by those who live a short distance from the lake, and they want to spend a few hours of leisure there. Both types of tourism have brought about significant changes in the organization of the territory and inhabited centers. In the last few years two other types of tourism have developed, the hiking one, for which adequate infrastructures have been built, and the "second house", for which new regulations have been introduced. Also along Lake Garda and in its immediate vicinity in the second half of the twentieth century, a veritable entertainment industry was formed, in fact a series of parks were born, today known together as Parks of Garda. The most important of these are Gardaland, a theme park with numerous attractions, an accommodation facility and a spectacular aquarium, Canevaworld, which presents the guest with two different parks, one on the world of cinema and a water park, Parco Natura Viva, a wildlife park where you can see endangered species that the care park then reinserted into the wild, and the Sigurtà Garden Park, a vast green oasis of 60 hectares along the Mincio river. During the high season and holidays the traffic turns out to be very intense, and it has now reached the complete saturation of the banks, which have almost become a single urban agglomeration, with villas, hotels, campsites and many other tourist buildings, all distributed along the only axis of sliding, so that today it has begun the construction of accommodation facilities in the most inland areas (Monte Baldo, Lessinia, Valpolicella, morainic hills and Brescia valleys).