Pozzolengo

The morainal hills prove to have been inhabited as early as the Neolithic Age.
The urban layout of the towns, the works of art, the monuments, and the museums are evidence of the peoples who passed through this area.
Volta Mantovana, Cavriana, Monzambano, Solferino, Castiglione delle Stiviere, San Martino, Pozzolengo and Ponti sul Mincio all stand in testimony to this glorious past.
In each of these towns you will find traces of the Etruscans, the Gauls and the Romans, as well as signs of more recent historical events such as the battles of the Risorgimento.

Geographically speaking, Pozzolengo is the last town in the province of Brescia, wedged between the provinces of Mantova and Verona. It boasts a very important past, evidence of which is the mighty fortified hamlet (“Castello di Pozzolengo”) built around the 9th or 10th century. It was reconstructed in the 13th centuryand then restored in the 1500s. The Castle, including a fewdwellings (castrum), stands on Mount Fluno. It has a trapezoidal plan, with the eastern and western sides longer than those of the north and south. A number of round towers are incorporated in its curtain wall with Guelph merlon battlements, especially along the western and southern sides, while a square tower (Mastio) serves as the entrance to the castle on the northern side. One of the round towers was made into a bell tower in the 15th century. Inside the Castle you can admire the remains of the Church of San Lorenzo Martyr, protector of the plague-stricken, where you can still see fragments of a medieval fresco from the 1300s that used to cover the apse and which depicts Christ with the evangelists Mark and John.  
Theimpressive Church of Saint Lorenzo, parish church from 1510, was extensively remodeled in 1740; converted into a Latin cross plan and with the addition of a central cupola. These changes gave life to a suggestive construction that has thirty-six cylindrical columns of fine marble, supported by stone pedestals and crowned with stupendous Corinthian capitals. 
The central nave measures a good 54.45 meters, and the presbytery is decorated with a magnificent altar inlaid with marble and precious stones. The neo-Classical façade has a very large central window (bricked up after 1945 and brought to light again in 2004) and an imposing bronze door (sculpted by Don Luciano Carnessali) that weighs 8oo kilograms and measures 4.61 by 2.33 meters. Inside you can admire the organ built in 1608 by Antegnati and then restored by Gaetano Zanfretta in 1881. The church contains a number of valuable works of art worth of mention: a painting by Brusasorci (depicting the Redeemer); a canvas by Gabriele Rettondini (1843); the painting by Andrea Celesti (c. 1692), in the Madonna del Carmine altar; the San Luigi Gonzaga altarpiece of Father Andrea Pozzo (1642-1707).


The old town center is home to four other important buildings:
- Palazzo Gelmetti: built in 1800 as the residence of the noble Gelmetti family, in 1883 it was rented by the City, which purchased it in 1888. Since the early 1900s it has been the seat of the Town Hall. A number of richly frescoed rooms can be found inside.  
- Villa Albertini: this grand 19th century palazzo in the center of town was built by field marshal Pietro Keller as a wedding gift for his daughter Gabriele Anna and her husband Count Giovanbattista Alberini. The palazzo has a portico with 5 arches and splendid period rooms decorated with stuccoes and frescoes.
- Palazzo Brighenti: an impressive 18th c. edifice in piazza San Martino.
- Piavoli Residence: 18th c. palazzo with a portico made of eight arches (in the rustic area), impressive double staircase and important frescoes. In one of the ground floor rooms you can see part of an earlier 16th c. structure.
The countryside around Pozzolengo is filled with typical farmsteads and wine cellars, and you can also find the Abbey of San Virgilio, from the Lombard period, with its chapel dating to 1104. There are incomparably beautiful roads in this area that wind their way through the morainal hills of Garda.