Sirmione, at the southern end of Lake Garda
With an annual GDP that’s double the size of Italy’s next most productive region, Lombardy has been rightly dubbed the ‘economic powerhouse’ of the nation. This affluent, extremely well-run bit of Italy sits tucked up against the border with Switzerland, and it’s hard not to feel a bit of a cultural connection between the two. That said, Lombardy is also emphatically Italian, with all the stylish clothes, beautiful buildings, stunning food and healthy work-life balance that that suggests.
As well as its industriousness, Lombardy is famed for its geographical beauty. With its romantic head in the Alps and its hard-working feet in the Po Valley plain, Lombardy yields celestial mountains, exquisite lakesides, emerald-green pasturelands and wide-skyed cropfields. There is no shortage of fresh-air escapes for those diligently working in the region’s many handsome, small-sized cities.