Cradled in a deep glacial valley north-west of Brescia, doesn't feature in most tour operators' Italian Lakes brochures. That's one reason to go there, another is scenery. Lake Iseo has a certain unrestrained elegance evident in its handsome waterside promenade and its wide squares lined by low arcades. Iseo is a place where people live and work,

ourists are welcome but they do not run the whole show as in some parts of the larger lakes. From Sulzano and Sale Marasino on the lake's eastern shore, boats ply back and forth to Monte Isola, which proclaims itself as 'Europe's largest lake island'. With its uneven, dromedary outline it is certainly one of the steepest - as anyone who climbs through the olive and walnut trees to the 13th-century church of Madonna della Ceriola will discover.