Salo & frustration

Salo seen from the south end of the town

We were very pleased that we decided to spend our last full day on Lake Garda by going across it to Salo. We were torn between Salo which some English guests at our hotel had recommended or going further north to Malescine & going on the cable car up Monte Baldo. We decided against the latter in that the views across the lake were so soft focus with the heat haze that it might not be worth the effort of going up. Anyhow, traffic grew to a standstill at Torri – market day – just at the entry of the road down to the car ferry departure & arrival point. We went down the road, bought our ticket & soon saw the ferry on its way back from Maderno. Nearby there were some market stalls to have a look at while we waited.

Salo, a pretty lakeside garden or two

Salo, still looking north

Looking south along the promenade

 

Behind the cathedral

Gasparo da Salo, the inventor of the violin

By that eccentric poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio

What really struck as we arrived at Maderno, an impression reinforced when we stopped to explore Salo, is just how different villages & towns are on the western side of the lake from those on the eastern.

Lake Garda is divided up the middle administratively. Bardolino, Torri etc. on the east side are in Veneto whereas Salo, Maderno etc. on the west side are in Lombardy. This division was made centuries ago. As a result they’ve developed differently. Lombardy was under the rule of the Austrians most of the time from the 16^th century, whereas Veneto was under the Venetians. One looked north, the other east.

So it is in Lombardy you have the painted ornamentation on buildings you find in Austria & wide open promenades. In Veneto all the villages seem to be dominated by castles securing their safety from the Austrians to the north & west.

We enjoyed a very pleasant stroll along the prom. We contemplated going around the cathedral but it was closed for a couple of hours for a lunch break. Instead we decided to check if the art gallery we’d seen advertised was open all day. The tourist info office was closed too but would be opening soon. We decided to visit a local bar & watch the world go by for a while.

So the afternoon was spent at the Museo di Salo looking at the Italianissima modern art exhibition. What a disappointment! It should have been great. Instead we felt frustration.

We were given an audio guide to take with us as we went around.  It was not the most efficient one. We seemed to spend half our time banging our fingers on buttons to go nowhere, or then discover we’d moved on half a dozen pictures on & had to have another bash to go back.

But even more galling was seeing the pictures illuminated on the handset. Some looked fabulous, the sort of thing we could appreciate spending some time with. However, the pictures in the gallery were so ill-lit that you couldn’t see them properly. One picture was of a woman, probably a prostitute, & soldier. You couldn’t even see the soldier in the picture & the woman was badly distorted. We were even more bemused to find ourselves in a roomful of seismology equipment, quite why we still don’t understand. When we had finished one floor we didn’t bother going up to the two higher ones.

For me two pictures did stand out a bit. One was “La Statua and La Scala” by Paresce. I found something quite Escheresque about the work. The other was an apparently simple painting of a tennis player pared down to a few lines, reminiscent of some of Matisse’s work.

I am putting a hyperlink to a website featuring the exhibition so you can see a picture of “La Statua and La Scala” as well as how dark the gallery was.

I can understand wanting to tone down the lighting to preserve paintings, especially when they are watercolours, but these were predominantly oils. To my mind there’s no point in lighting an exhibition so darkly that you can’t actually see the pictures. It’s a great pity as, from what I could see on the audio guide, it would have been a fascinating exhibition.