Desenzano del Garda

Desenzano is the capital of the lower Garda: the old harbour with its Venetian-style bridge, the castle above, and a Roman villa alone worth the stop, among the most important late antique residences in the north of Italy, with its mosaics of cupids at the grape harvest. The name may come from the very man who built it, a certain Decentius, whose estate the villa was; there is also a simpler explanation, tied to the fact that the town runs down the slope of the hill. In the cathedral, a Last Supper by Tiepolo surprises anyone who wanders in.

In the thirteenth century Desenzano was, together with nearby Sirmione, a stronghold of Cathar heresy: its bishop was Giovanni di Lugio, author of the Liber de duobus principiis, the chief work of Cathar theology to survive to this day. The heresy ended in 1276, when the Della Scala arrested a group of heretics who were burned at the stake in Verona soon after. In piazza Malvezzi, on palazzo Todeschini, a stone still stands on which bankrupts were made to climb and be publicly punished, carved with a sixteenth-century date. In 1859, during the battle of Solferino and San Martino, the town turned into one great hospital for the wounded of the second war of independence. Today the lakefront runs towards Sirmione among beaches and evening drinks, ferries open up the whole lake, and it remains the easiest gateway to Garda.