“We commenced work and are proud of the result: now we are waiting for the other town councils to follow suit”. The mayor of Limone sul Garda, Franceschino Risatti, is talking about a stretch of cycle path on Lake Garda that some (perhaps rightly) have called the most beautiful in the world. He puts down its successfully completion to the fact that his council in the province of Brescia “does things instead of wasting time just talking about them”.

And so now we have a two-kilometre cycle path suspended over the lake: a 2.6-metre wide work of art hanging from the side of the mountain 50 metres above the water. Walkers and cyclists may well imagine that they are on a road to paradise: imposing mountains on one side, yachts in the background on the other, and a view of the lake that changes at every turn yet always resembles a painting by Tintoretto.