Asolo discovery guide

Asolo is the Veneto's most literary small town, and one of its most beautiful. It is a walled hill settlement of arcaded streets and frescoed facades, with a fortress on the summit above and views that genuinely do run in every direction.

The people who came here are the town's real distinction. Caterina Cornaro's court after 1489 made it a minor Renaissance capital; Pietro Bembo set his dialogues on love here; Robert Browning invented a word for what the place does to you; Eleonora Duse, the greatest Italian actress of her age, and Freya Stark, who wrote her way across Arabia, are both buried in the cemetery below the town.

And then there is Villa Barbaro at Maser, twenty minutes away: Palladio's villa frescoed throughout by Veronese, the only surviving building where the two worked together. It is a UNESCO site and, for anyone interested in either man, unmissable.

April to June and September to October are the best windows -- mild, clear, and quiet enough that the town feels like itself.

Summer brings the crowds, particularly at weekends, and the hill is hot. It is also when the villa opening days are most frequent, so it is a genuine trade-off.

Winter is cold and very quiet, with mist in the valleys below that occasionally leaves the town above it in sun -- Asolo at its most atmospheric. Villa Barbaro's opening is much reduced.

The antiques market falls on the second weekend of every month and is worth timing for.

If you travel slowly: stay a night. Asolo empties in the late afternoon when the day visitors leave, and the evening on the main square is the reason people fall for the place.

If you want the essentials: Piazza Garibaldi, the Castello della Regina, the cathedral for its Lotto and Bassano altarpieces, and the climb to the Rocca. Half a day, comfortably.

If you're after local character: the second-weekend antiques market, or simply an hour at a café table on the square watching a very small town go about its business.

If you want to go past the obvious: Villa Barbaro at Maser, and the walk up to the Rocca at the end of the day, when the hundred horizons actually earn the phrase.

Asolo is very small -- around two thousand people inside and below the walls -- and it is on the "most beautiful villages in Italy" list, which brings coach traffic on summer weekends that the streets were not built for. Midweek and out of season the town is a different and much better place.

The hill is steep and largely pedestrian. Park in the car parks below and walk or take the lift and shuttle; driving into the centre is possible but unwelcome and largely pointless.

Villa Barbaro is a private house, still owned by the family, opening on restricted days with limited numbers. Those limits are the reason Veronese's frescoes are still in the condition they are. Book ahead, and accept that turning up unannounced will not work.

The antiques market on the second weekend of each month is a genuine local trade rather than a tourist one, and worth supporting on its own terms.

What a visitor actually spends in Asolo

Asolo is the most expensive small town in this part of the Veneto -- it has a long history as a retreat for people with money, and the hotels reflect it. Staying below the hill costs considerably less.