Lavagnone does not look like much, and that is rather the point. South of Lake Garda, behind Desenzano, the landscape is a rumple of low hills left by the glacier that once filled the lake basin, and in a hollow among them lies a small peat basin that was once a shallow lake. Around four thousand years ago, in the Bronze Age, people built houses on timber piles at its edge, and when the water level fell and the peat built up, the wood was preserved in the mud like a time capsule.
The site is one of a group of prehistoric pile dwellings in and around the Alps that were listed by UNESCO in 2011. Excavations here turned up houses, pottery, tools and even wooden objects that normally do not survive, including a very old wheel, among the earliest known in Europe. You cannot see the houses today, because the interest is below ground, but there is a small protected area and information, and the basin gives a sense of how people lived at the water's edge long before the Romans arrived.
The riding in the area is not at the same level as the mountains to the north, but it is pleasant. The moraine hills around Desenzano, Solferino and San Martino della Battaglia are lined with vineyards, cypresses and country lanes with short, bendy climbs and good views, and the battlefields of 1859, where French and Piedmontese forces fought Austria, have monuments and a tower. Traffic on the main roads can be heavy, especially at weekends in summer, so the quiet lanes inland are better. Late spring and early autumn avoid the worst of the crowds.
Desenzano del Garda, four kilometres away, is a busy lakeside town with plenty of fuel, restaurants and cafes, and it is a good base for the day. The local white wine, Lugana, is made on the clay soils south of the lake and goes well with lake fish. If you want the Garda shore itself, the western road north from Salò runs through long tunnels and under steep cliffs with views over the water, and it is a classic run for riders, if a busy one.