Ancient Brescia, a Cork-size alter ego to the larger Milan, has crashed into the weekend break circuit with all the brashness of a late-comer. First it set out its credentials as a serious player on the art circuit. Each year the local convent turned art gallery, the Santa Giulia City Museum, stages a massive exhibition which costs €6m to mount. This year’s includes Van Gogh, Gauguin and Millet and is expected to bring in 600,000 visitors.
Most of these are Italian, but with Aer Lingus and Ryanair flying to nearby Bergamo, there is no reason for things to stay that way. Particularly when the area is dotted with extra attractions such as vineyards where the finest white wines in Italy (make plenty of time for a tasting in Franciacorta) and some luscious reds can be sampled.
Brescia has a name as an industrial town, but in the heart is one of the most picturesque Italian medieval walled towns you can find. The rambling castle is now home to three museums, and a collection of weaponry to remind us of when this was at the cutting edge of weapons technology, when the Venetians ruled central Europe and anyone who fled with the secrets of sword and musket-making was deemed a traitor.
Brescia was a wealthy city from Roman times. Having discovered the biggest amphitheatre north of Rome local heritage activists have a problem. The building sitting atop the site is one of the most beautiful medieval public buildings in the region. One wonders what An Taisce would say.
They built their new cathedral in 1604 beside the old one, the astonishing Duomo Vecchio, so you can wander from one to the other and transport yourself through a millennium of spirituality without leaving the shopping quarter of town. At the Tosio Martinengo Art Gallery you meet Dürer, Dugo and the Tesori Ritrovati, throw in 70 public fountains and you have the picture.
Don’t rush the permanent exhibitions in the Santa Giulia either – they have some of the finest and best displayed medieval Italian art you will come across including the magnificent Roman bronze 'Winged Victory' which has become a symbol of the town.
Brescia also staged the first Italian Grand Prix before it moved to Monza and is still the departure point for a famous annual thousand mile road race. The Mille Miglia museum gives petrol heads a real feel, not just for the development of motoring (there are even samples of road surfaces from yesteryear) but also for the changing politics and popular movements of the times, the rise of fascism and the post war reconstruction of Italy.
This is more than a citybreak destination. Garda, the largest of Italy’s famous five lakes (the others are Maggiore, Lugano, Como, and Iseo), is the area's most famous attraction, with the picturesque medieval spa town of Sirmione often crowded to capacity in the summer.
The shorelines seem closer than they actually are, the buildings and the landscape felt lit from within, and the lakeside promenades have the breezy feel of the seaside. At Gardone Riviera you find the preposterous Vittoriale degli Italiani, one-time residence of 20th-century Italian poet, womaniser and egomaniac Gabriele D'Annunzio. In a career that seemed based on an episode of Father Ted, he wrote saccharine poetry, hoarded trinkets and dust-gathering statues, and spent a large amount of government money on his lakeside home.
The Vittoriale is worth a visit just to see the bedroom coffin in which D'Annunzio meditated like a modern day Dracula and the prow of a battleship lodged in the gardens to commemorate his attempt to 'liberate' the city of Fiume from Yugoslav rule.
We stopped in to Ca’Lojera winery in the Lugana wine production area for some fine dining, not the stuff you eat on the commercial culinary circuit, but a taste of real food, presented with a deceptively unpretentious air, washed down with magnificent wine from the vineyards outside.
At a dairy farm in Artogne near Lake Iseo you can hike into the hills with their breath-taking view before encountering the goats and their cheese in the same location.
There is a grandeur about this Italy. Even when the tourists come in high summer the air that attracted the romantic poets hangs over the vines. Join the Bergamo set.
Aer Lingus fly Dublin to Bergamo. www.aerlingus.com Departure Dublin 15:05 return Milan Bergamo 19:30. Prices start at €40 ex taxes.
Eoghan Corry stayed at Jolly Hotel Igea Viale della Stazione, 15 25100 Brescia Tel: +39-030-44221 Fax: +39-030-44224 brescia@jollyhotels.it www.jollyhotels.it. And at Hotel Villa Sofia Via Cornella, 9 25083 Gardone Riviera (BS) Tel: +39-0365-22729 Fax +39-0365-22369 villasofia@savoypalace.it www.savoypalace.it
Further information www.bresciatourism.it
