Marks the start of the ‘Brescian Riviera’ with aquatic fun, noisy speedboats and waterfront fish restaurants. The Heller botanical gardens, ½ km north, remain, surprisingly, unpopular (www.hellergarden.com). That can’t be said of Villa Vittoriale next door (www.vittoriale.it), one of the lake’s most ostentatious villas though hardly the most attractive. Gabriele d’Annunzio (see also Pescara) was its owner and the gardens are a pompous testimony to his mad career as soldier and poet. The souvenirs are so bizarre that by the time you come to the bow-section of a 4,000-ton Italian cruiser, salvaged from the sea bed off the Dalmatian coast, the incongruity fails to shock. D’Annunzio died in 1938, during the Fascist heyday, when his bellicose deeds and extravagant poetry were taught and recited in schools. Mention him today and the Italians smile and change the subject.