Today there are only a few inns along the Riviera and in time they have become restaurants, holiday farms and multi-star hotels, with a variety of ambiences that range from the family business to the luxury class, to satisfy all tastes, even the more refined.
On the banks of the Brenta gastronomy has been expressed over the centuries on three levels: that of the rustic food of the farmhands who ate 'broad beans, beef and polenta'; that of the middle class whom Goldoni describes - they varied the fare with 'rice, capon, roast veal, rissoles, little birds, stewed beef, and cheese'.
At the top end of the scale, during the season in the country the nobles' dinners were gastronomic events featuring dozens of courses. Game alternated with fish, there was a host of pheasant and fowl and elaborate sauces, mountains of pastries and sweet desserts accompanied by wandering minstrels and rivers of Veneto wines.
Today too the gastronomy of the Brenta boasts a variety of winning dishes displaying inventiveness and tradition, both fruits of the earth and seafood. The former includes rural delights such as pork, duck, pheasant, rabbit, game and the fragrant countryside and market-garden greens. The sea flavours begin with the
There were once inns all along the course of the River Brenta, simple places with fine wrought-in signs and rather Spartan rooms for the traveller's repose, where he could refresh himself in summer and take some warmth in winter while waiting for his boat to pass through the locks.
