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This is the region’s western-most lake, and its main town – with a traffic-free, medieval centre – is Orta San Giulio. The wooded promontory on which it stands was turned into a Sacro Monte , a path lined by 20 decorated chapels, between 1591 and 1770. Boats sail from here to the tiny idyll of Isola San Giulio. At the north end of Lake Orta, Omegna is the unlikely centre of Italian industrial design. Its craft factories founded at the beginning of the 20th century developed into the giants of housewares, such as Alessi and Bialetti (see Design Objects). The Forum Museum celebrates this utilitarian art form.

Varese is part of a quartet of small lakes (along with Monate, Comábbio and pond-sized Biandronno) that were popular with 18th-century Lombard landscape painters for their bucolic settings, Romanesque churches, mirror-like waters and Alpine backdrops. A few factories notwithstanding, the area is largely unchanged today. Roads rarely touch the lake shores, forcing detours into lakeside villages. This marshy region has yielded some important prehistoric finds, most especially on Lake Varese’s Isolino islet (catch a boat from Biandronno, June–September), though the actual finds are kept at the Musei Civici in Varese town.

Lake Lugano snakes between Italy and Switzerland, and its principal resort, Campione d’Italia, is in fact an Italian enclave within Switzerland’s borders. Campione is a slightly raucous island of pizza restaurants and gambling casinos interrupting the more staid Swiss shoreline, where to the south, outside Melide, is the delightfully kitsch Swiss Miniatur, with its vaguely accurate “map” of Switzerland, including all its major monuments reproduced at 1/25 of their actual size.

Lake Lugano

A vibrant city of medieval streets, fashionable boutiques and Renaissance churches, Bergamo is one of the Top 10 of the region.

This is the prettiest of the smaller lakes, and the town of Iseo itself – with modest hotel complexes and watersports facilities – is as touristy as it gets. Further north, at Lovere, Galleria Taldini has a small but perfectly formed collection of paintings by the likes of Jacopo Bellini, Tintoretto and Tiepolo. The interior of the church of Santa Maria della Neve, on the edge of Pisogne, is a visual delight of equal merit, its abundant frescoes painted by Romanino in 1532–4 (if the church is locked, enquire at the café inside the adjacent cloisters).

A slip of a lake just west of Garda, Lake Idro is renowned for its trout, sailing, windsurfing and fine skiing in the surrounding mountains. Sports and the lake’s natural beauty are to the fore, while cultural highlights are Anfo’s 16th-century castle and the 15th-century frescos in the church of Sant’Antonio.

The industrialized face of Brescia hides a fine medieval and Renaissance centre, with several mementos of its time as a Roman colony (including a temple and theatre in the heart of the town). Installed in the ancient San Salvatore e Santa Giulia monastery is the excellent Museo della Città, a repository of prehistoric, Roman and medieval objects and artworks. The painting gallery (Pinacoteca Tosio-Matinengo) sports works by local Renaissance artists as well as the great Raphael and Tintoretto.

The palaces, churches and artworks by Mantegna and Giulio Romano help make Mantova, too, one of the entire region’s Top 10.

Mantova

Mantova

Duke Vespasiano Gonzaga had this town built from scratch in the late 16th century, the closest any potentate ever got to fully realizing the ideal Renaissance city. A single ticket lets you in to all the major sights: Palazzo del Giardino (the summer palace); the fabulous trompe-l’oeil frescoed Galleria; and the Teatro all’Antica, the first purpose-built theatre since antiquity.

This town has been home to some of the world’s finest ever makers of stringed instruments, a craft that reached its pinnacle in the 17th century at the workshop of Antonio Stradivari. It is hardly surprising, then, that Cremona’s top sights are fiddle-oriented: the Raccolta dei Violini is a roomful of exquisite 17th- and 18th-century instruments; while Museo Stradivariano pulls out all the big names in violin-making (Amati, Stradivarius, Guaneri).

Piazza del Comune, Cremona