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The best place to pick up marked-down coffee-table art tomes and other bookish souvenirs. Also explore upstairs for cheap used novels in foreign languages.

Little Limone is tucked into a cove, with a long beach, small harbour and dozens of hotels.

Bassetti and Frette offer affordable, stylish linens. The haute couture of sheets and tablecloths is represented by Pratesi and, at the pinnacle, Jerusum, which provided the lace-edged linens for Italy’s royal family in the 19th century.

The best of Cannobio’s restaurants offers Piemontese cooking with inventive touches and a generous use of vegetables and lake fish.

This island eatery’s fixed-price feast has remained unaltered since 1947: antipasto, trout, fried chicken, cheese, fruit, gelato , water, wine and brandy-spiked coffee.

Sadly, most of this Swiss city capping the northern end of the lake was rebuilt along modern Swiss lines of concrete, glass and steel. What remains of the medieval city, however, is worth crossing the border for. The 14th-century Castello Visconteo is a highlight, as is the Santuario della Madonna del Sasso (1497), which preserves paintings by Bramantino and Ciseri (avoid the long climb by taking the cable car). The Arps (20th-century artists Jean, Hans and Margherita) donated many works to a modern art gallery installed in the 17th-century Casa Rusca.

Built in 1158 after Barbarossa (see 1176: Lombard League Defeats Barbarossa) razed the original town 5 km (3 miles) to the west, Lodi is celebrated for its Duomo and octagonal church of the Incoronata. The latter is slathered with frescoes, gilded stuccoes and fine paintings by Il Bergognone.

“The Moor” ruled Milan’s Renaissance court but ceded to France, later siding against the French and being exiled.

Lombard buildings from the 5th to 10th centuries feature triangular façades, blind arcades and ribbed vaulting.

The most old-fashioned of three moderate hotels on a block near the Castello offers smiling service, bright, large rooms with worn but solid old furnishings, and 10 per cent off the next-door restaurant. Rooms get smaller as you go up each floor, so try for the ground floor.