Lombardy

Most people treat Brescia as a train change between Milan and Verona, or a base for Lake Garda day trips. That works if you came for the lake. I keep ending up here for the Carmine quarter, where fabric shops still stack bolts of cloth in ground-floor windows and the streets feel lived-in rather than … Read more

Most visitors treat Sirmione as the castle at the throat of the peninsula and a queue for thermal water. I walk the other way: past the last gelato windows, onto the rising path where the land narrows and the olive trees take over. San Pietro in Mavino sits up there, a small stone church older … Read more