In 1902, if you got off the train in Palazzolo sull’Oglio, on the railway line Milan-Venice built by the Austrians, and took just two steps, the Rossi family welcomed you to their Osteria della Villetta with lodging, a three-story Art Nouveau building perfumed with traditional recipes. The exquisiteness of this place is that the family stayed where they were born and preserved what back then was a normal place and today is the enchanted set of an Early Twentieth-century film. You are tempted to get there by train and dress with the modest Sunday elegance of our great-grandmothers. Ask for a veranda table, order a Franciacorta wine, barley with herbs, sausage and whisked Grana Padano served in a white soup plate, and a custard and halva ice-cream (halva is a sweet middle Eastern paste made of honey, sesame and sugar). You are tempted to walk arm in arm on the riverside. The vegetable garden on the hills, the flour of the neighbourhood farm, the family’s and artist’s memories, along with Maurizio and Grazia, a traditional but modern couple, make up that natural charm that makes you sigh in the inns of small country villages.

Words Paola Corini. Photo Meraviglia Paper.