This little town in the province of Brescia is on the west side of Lake Garda in the narrow Salò bay. In 1943 it became the seat of the Italian Socialist Republican government and the last bastion of the Fascist dictatorship. Nowadays it is a popular holiday destination and an excellent health resort. In the town is the late Gothic cathedral (fifteenth century) with a fine Renaissance door (1509), the sixteenth century Palazzo della Magnifica Patria which houses the Nastro Azzurro Museum

(containing documents and other memorabilia of the Napoleonic era and the first World War) and the Ateneo of Salò (a sixteenth century seat of learning with an excellent library), and the modern Palazzo Comunale (town hall).

The holiday resort of San Felice di Benaco is near Salò on the hills which rise above the south-west shores of the lake. You can visit the parish church with its baroque interior and the Madonna del Carmine Sanctuary which is Romanesque-Gothic.