This was published 8 years ago
L'Albereta, Italy: The place to avoid Italy’s tourist crowds
L'Albereta and its vineyards.Credit: Brian Johnston
I'm praying for escape. Tour crowds hoot and holler in the square in front of Milan's cathedral. Visitors slurp up neon-coloured "homemade" gelatos, surge up Via Dante, haul designer bags from the shops along Via Montenapoleone as if they're the spoils of war. I've heard more Chinese than Italian, and the city is early-summer hot. There are times when Italy feels like a theme park, and I wish I were somewhere else.
I get in my rental car and flee the city onto the A4 motorway towards Venice. Huge articulated trucks from Romania rumble eastwards, and dented Fiats with Italian numberplates indulge in dodgem-car manoeuvres that leave me puttering along the curb like a nervous great-grandmother. I grip my steering wheel and wince as sunlight flashes off overhead signs. Rovato, next exit.
I veer off and don't travel far from the motorway, just two roundabouts and four kilometres along a road to Sarnico-Erbusco, but the madness of tourist Italy quickly peels away. The trucks are gone, the tour coaches are gone, and concrete suburbs have given way to higgledy-piggledy towns with pink-painted houses and bread shops whose doors flap with coloured plastic strips. Two old men, leaning on walking sticks, lurch along the roadside towards a country café. Then I'm heading up a hill and the sun is shining on vine leaves that rustle in the breeze.
Relaxing on the deck of L'Albereta's bistro.Credit: Brian Johnston
I peer through the windscreen, looking for L'Albereta, and there is it, along a driveway on which gravel crunches. It hunkers in the shade of cedar trees, façade draped in green ivy. My prayers, it seems, have been answered.
L'Albereta is about halfway between Milan and Verona, and onwards from Verona brings you to Venice, that great centre of holiday hullabaloo. Yet curiously, L'Albereta seems to loiter just beyond the edges of known Italy, in a peaceful little wine-producing region called Franciacorta overlooked by the tourist crush. Its ridges of hills, coughed up by ancient glaciers, provide a series of opera-box seats with views towards the drama of the Alps, still snow-capped despite the summer haze. The fabled Italian lakes region isn't far. In fact, Lake Iseo is only up the road, and has lakeside villages where local wine bars outnumber souvenir shops, and hilly flanks where chestnut forests rustle. Some claims it's the "next Lake Como", but the news doesn't seem to have arrived here yet. There are no traffic jams or sunburned Americans wielding guidebooks.
I park my car, lift my sunglasses and stroll about. L'Albereta is a 19th-century country house that shamelessly incorporates every stereotype of what a country house should be. Tennis balls thwack on its court, staff strut its lawns in search of guests wanting a glass of sparkling wine, and fresh flowers and antiques are strewn about the interior. Grand-looking fellows in powdered wigs and frockcoats smirk from the odd painting, and the fireplace in the petite Sala Scacchi erupts with heraldic figures.
Relais & Chateaux L'Albereta- Erbusco guest room.
Yet not everything is predictable: the gardens are dotted with modern sculpture, the lounges with modern chairs. One of the suites has a retractable ceiling so you can lie on your bed and ogle the stars. Beneath the hotel lies one of Italy's top medi-spas, with a décor more spaceship than country house, especially in the evenings, when purple and blue lighting make it glow. White-coated dieticians and osteopaths lurk and Milanese society ladies flop by the pool. They shuffle off for lunch in a special restaurant that limits their intake to 600 calories.
Such an idea is outrageous in Lombardy, known for its saffron-flavoured risotto, ossobucco, Gorgonzola cheese, and stuffed pasta filled with sausage. Over the next few days I indulge with reckless disregard for any calories as I sally forth for excursions to the lakes and surrounding small cities. In Italy, there's always a sunlight square with restaurant tables at which to loiter and indulge. To my delight I'm finding that, in this region, few of them are packed with confused Koreans or Spaniards shrieking over their morning's adventures.
L'Albereta is my serene retreat at afternoon's end, an ivy-covered haven to soothe the senses. Its green lawns lure with afternoon tea in the shade of trees, and its bistro terrace has views over Lake Iseo towards the Alps so gaze-worthy that the sluggish service seems a positive benefit. In the evenings, flickering candles dot the terrace wall, chatter floats out from the bar, and stars gleam through the branches of a cedar tree. The raucous din of my busy Milan hotel seems continents away.
The Cappella Colleoni in Bergamo.Credit: Brian Johnston
I'm saving the best – and the remainder of my calories – for last. L'Albereta is a Relais & Châteaux property, which means not just a focus on luxury and service but good food, too. Leonefelice, its fine-dining restaurant, is a quiet zone of just 11 tables over which yellow globes of light seem to float, and whose reflections decorate the trees beyond the windows. Before the sun fades the alpine views keep me preoccupied as I nibble on ridiculously addictive focaccia, dipped in L'Albereta's own estate-made olive oil. As the darkness sets in, however, I realise that, in the other direction, I can see through plate glass into the kitchen, where steam billows and chefs in puffed white hats toil.
It seems like an evening to start off with sparkling wine, something for which the Franciacorta region is particularly known. The waiter brings it with a selection of amuse-bouches: cannoli stuffed with goat's cheese; steamed bread with lard, spicy sauce and crescenza cheese; chickpea cake with mortadella ham. As an entrée I choose eel, which comes straight from Lake Iseo. It's glazed in balsamic vinegar with green cucumber, green apple and chervil, and is delicious.
Later, I'm onto a glass of Bellavista Merlot 2001, produced in the hotel's wine estate. My primo is rabbit-stuffed cappelletti pasta with anchovy butter, followed by secundo of suckling pig ribs with black salsify and mustard potatoes. I dine in a mellow daze, smug in the knowledge that I've escaped the doleful tourist meals of Venice. For dessert I have a raspberry cloud, pink as the clouds that floated across my view just before sunset: a happy ending to a grand escape.
The gardens of L'Albereta.Credit: Brian Johnston
FOUR GREAT DAY TRIPS
Milan, Lake Como and Verona are the major, visitor-thronged cities in this region, but four destinations within an easy drive provide all of Italy's wonderful art, architecture and history with far fewer crowds.
BERGAMO
Bergamo is just a 32-kilometre drive west and one of my favourite Italian towns, with a lively cultural scene and fine art museum (Accademia Carrara). The lower town has gracious nineteenth-century boulevards lined by busy cafés and shops, while the medieval and Renaissance upper town sits on a rocky outcrop with splendid views over the Po Valley in one direction and Alps in the other. It's crowded with old cobbled squares, palaces and chapels. The pink-and-white Cappella Colleoni has frescoes by Tiepolo and is alone worth the visit. www.visitbergamo.net
BRESCIA
Brescia might be best-known to Sydneysiders as the name of a furniture chain store, but the town has 2000 years of history and architecture, including a Roman temple and theatre, two cathedrals, a gorgeous Renaissance loggia and innumerable palazzi. The former Monastery of St Julia houses a museum of impressive historical objects that include Celtic helmets, Roman bronzes and medieval applied arts; Tosio Matinengo Gallery has a good collection of Italian paintings. The town, ringed by industrial suburbs that shouldn't deter you, is just 27 kilometres east of L'Albereta. www.turismobrescia.it
LAKE ISEO
This long lake starts just 11 kilometres north of L'Albereta and is little known compared to Lake Como or Lake Garda, where traffic jams on narrow, winding roads are a regular occurrence. You'll get a much better feel for ordinary Italian life here, starting off at Iseo town, with its market square, busy cafés and local kids running up and down the flower-decorated lakeshore promenades. Hop on the ferry to the car-free island of Montisola, which rises 600 metres from the water and packs in 11 villages, eight churches and a castle. There are some lovely walking tracks. www.iseolake.info
CREMONA
Though it's a bit of a longer drive (72 kilometres south of L'Albereta) it's worth the journey to visit this small city, most famous for producing Stradivarius and other violins since the seventeenth century; check out some fine historical examples in the Museo Stradivariano, where the instruments are played each morning to keep the strings and tones in working order. The town itself has pretty Gothic arcades and an expansive main square overlooked by a pinkish marble cathedral. To my mind, this is one of Italy's loveliest piazzas, which is saying something. www.mycremona.it
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Emirates flies from Sydney and Melbourne to Dubai (14.5hr) with onward connections to both Venice (6.5 hr) and Milan (7hr). Phone 1300 303 777, see www.emirates.com/au
GETTING AROUND
Leading Australian self-drive specialist DriveAway Holidays offers car hire at Milan and Venice airports from around $300 per week. Phone 1300 723 972, see www.driveaway.com.au
STAYING THERE
L'Albereta is an hour east of Milan and two hours west of Venice near Erbusco in Lombardy. Rooms from €230 ($364) per night. Its fine-dining restaurant Leonefelice has tasting menus at €95 ($148) as well as à la carte choices; the hotel also has a more informal bistro. Phone 1300 121 341, see www.relaischateaux.com
Brian Johnston travelled as a guest of Relais & Châteaux and DriveAway Holidays.
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