Eugi Gufo's siteEugi Gufo

The visit to Desenzano del Garda in the second half of December was one of my greatest tourist failures. I had made a bad choice (at random) of an unfamiliar place and encountered weather unsuitable for photography. But since I do not know if or when I will return, I am writing a short report anyway.

The historic centre is beautiful and has many medieval elements, but the whole town feels fake, a bit like tourist resorts for the wealthy: too clean and perfect to feel alive. As a result, all the beauty I encountered conveys nothing but boredom. In my opinion, Venice will become like this in a few years as well.

Therefore, the only truly original beauty worthy of mention is the nativity scene built on boats.

The harbour is quite large and full of private boats. Unfortunately, I did not manage to find one more beautiful than this. In the background, you can see the large ferries that connect Desenzano with other towns along the shores of Lake Garda.

But photographing a lake with clouds like these is almost impossible. The few shots that are even watchable convey an incredible sense of sadness.

So let us return to the town. The 12th-century castle is closed (presumably for renovation), but its walls are covered with notices advertising an entrance fee of one euro.

On the other hand, in one of the adjacent streets I finally discovered what electric torches are.

However, being strongly interested in seeing at least one military structure in the area, I climbed to the top of one of the hills outside the town (road gradient: 45 degrees and more). Damn it… the castles surrounding the town are private and therefore not legally accessible.

Near the castle shown above I found a structure just over one metre tall with an inexplicable purpose. Is it a mini chicken coop or a mega dog kennel? (The hill was full of dogs and chickens.)

Let us return to the town once again. And we notice that local motorists are capable of interpreting three road signs and four written notices placed in a row.

The residents of apartment buildings, on the other hand, seem to like double signs:

The bicycle racks are practically identical to those already seen in Brescia (Desenzano is located in the province of Brescia).

The urban bus stops are attractive and have a design I had never seen before.

A resident of Viale Ferruccio Lorenzini had expressly asked me to photograph carefully the rainwater ditch over which residents have built small bridges. But it is unlikely that the responsible councillor will see the photo and finally decide to do something. I am not that famous yet.

The typical Desenzano bin and bench:

Another bin and a very common lamppost:

In the town centre there are very large bins (about 1.5 metres high) but without ashtrays. As a result, there are always many cigarette butts scattered around them.

Speaking of waste: even in Desenzano there is at least one automatic snack shop (as in Vigevano and Mortara). At this point I am starting to wonder whether this is a mandatory feature of small Italian towns…

In some streets of the centre I found runners laid across the middle of the carriageway. Holes have been cut into the runners for the manholes.

Does the inverted number 17 symbolise something, or is it simply a way of keeping bad luck away from one’s home?

Who knows… Another thing I do not know is how to show you in a photograph the fact that Desenzano is the birthplace of the former minister Mariastella Gelmini…

The point is that I have already shown the most interesting things about Desenzano. All that remains is the beautiful railway station, which, because of yet another difference in levels, has three floors on one side and two on the opposite side (the track side).

You may have noticed the police car. It arrived in a hurry because, according to a rumour, «there was a horse on the tracks». So I had already mentally prepared myself for a massive delay to my train to Milan, but in the end everything went fine.
See you next.