Brescia

It had been a very stormy night and we woke a couple of times to thunder and lightning but we were nice and cosy in the van.

We had Lisa from Belgium who is cycling and in a tent in for a coffee to warm her up. She is very brave cycling to Rome.

Then we got on our way to Brescia - a town with a lot of history.

We parked in an aire with barrier and cameras near a metro station and caught the metro into the centre. It was still very rainy when we got into town.

The first buildings we saw were very impressive.

We walked towards the museum and came across a lot of Roman ruins - the archeological area.

There is a temple and theatre beside each other.

By this time we were a little damp and hungry so we found a nearby bar for some lunch. It was in a 13th century tower that used to be part of the city walls.

After a delicious very Italian lunch of Parma guano and stuffed pasta we then moved onto the museum which went through the ages from prehistoric to 15th century. The museum is housed in an old monastery that was built on top of Roman ruins.

There were lots of Celtic relics including hordes of coins and silver and neck torcs.

Then the Roman’s moved in and left a huge amount of ruins, plaques, pottery, glassware etc etc

Here are the ruins of residential houses below the monastery.

There were many mosaics that had been partly saved from all over the city. There were then many funerary sculptures showing the occupants of the tombs.

We were not quite finished the museum but we had a booked tour to see the insides of the other Roman ruins.

First was the small temple underneath - still quite complete with original walls and floor.

Then inside the temple they had a complete bronze statue called ‘winged victory’ - one of the best preserved in the world. She used to hold a shield with the name of the victor.

The temple to Jupiter had only bits of statue left.

After this we went back to finish off the bits we hadn’t done. The old monastery had been highly decorated in various parts.

The last thing we saw was a large cross with many jewels on it - the Desiderius Cross. The jewels are from many periods in time from Roman to 10th century.

After all that we were finished and made our way back through the rainy city to the metro, discovering a rhino on the way.

We got back to the van and had a warming dinner of sausages, beans and potatoes - not haute cuisine but very satisfying!