Lake Como is a flooded glacial trench shaped like an upside-down Y, 46 kilometres long and in places more than 400 metres deep — deep enough that the water never really warms and the mountains fall straight into it. The Romans came for the same reason everyone still does: it is the first beautiful thing you reach when you come down off the Alps.
The town of Como
Most people treat Como as a place to change from train to ferry. That is a mistake worth half a day to correct.
The Duomo took from 1396 to 1770 to finish, which is why it begins as Gothic and ends as a Baroque dome. Flanking the main door are two seated Roman figures — Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, both born in this town, both unrepentant pagans, and both left in place on a cathedral front anyway.
Basilica of Sant'Abbondio, ten minutes out from the centre, is the better building: a five-naved Romanesque church from the eleventh century with a cycle of fourteenth-century frescoes filling the apse. It is almost always empty.
Silk. Como has woven it since the 1400s and still supplies a serious share of Europe's fashion houses. The Museo della Seta walks through the whole process from cocoon to finished bolt, and the shops off Via Vittorio Emanuele are the reason to travel with room in the bag.
Villa Olmo, neoclassical and 1797, sits on the western shore with its gardens open to anyone who walks in.
Up the funicular
The Como–Brunate funicular has climbed the wall behind the town since 1894, gaining 500 metres in seven minutes. At the top there are a handful of restaurants, a path through the woods to the Volta lighthouse, and the view that makes sense of the whole geography — the lake unrolling north between the mountains, the Alps behind it on a clear day.
Go up in the late afternoon and come down after sunset.
Where to sleep
The famous names sit on the shoreline north of town and charge accordingly. The town itself is full of small apartment-style places in the old centre, which is where the arithmetic turns in your favour.
These are rental homes and apartments rather than hotels — places we picked out ourselves because we liked them, not because a search threw them up. You get your own key, a good room and usually a kitchen. There is no concierge, no spa and nobody making breakfast downstairs, and no rewards scheme either, since none of them belongs to a chain.
For a week on the lake with a kitchen of your own and the ferry dock five minutes away, most people would take that trade happily.
| Hotel | Town | From CHF | Typical | Rewards club |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Historical Suites by "The House Of Travelers" | Como | 133≈ €141 · $162 | 146≈ €155 · $178 | — |
| Fitzgerald Building by "The House Of Travelers" | Como | 140≈ €148 · $170 | 173≈ €183 · $210 | — |
| Vitrum - Como Luxury Suites | Como | 173≈ €183 · $210 | 178≈ €188 · $216 | — |
| Alessia's Place | Como | 158≈ €167 · $192 | 208≈ €220 · $253 | — |
| Bello!Lake Como Suites | Como | 133≈ €141 · $162 | 263≈ €278 · $320 | — |
Out on the water
The ferries are the point of Lake Como, and the slow ones are better than the fast ones.
- Como to Bellagio takes about two hours on the battello, calling at Torno, Nesso,
- Villa Carlotta at Tremezzo — a 1690s villa with a botanical garden famous for azaleas
- Villa del Balbianello at Lenno, on a wooded promontory, reachable on foot from Lenno
- Bellagio sits on the point where the two southern arms divide, which is why every
Argegno and Lenno. The hydrofoil does it in forty-five minutes and shows you nothing.
and rhododendrons that peak in May.
or by taxi boat. The loggia is the single most photographed thing on the lake.
painting of this lake is really a painting of Bellagio.
On foot
The Greenway del Lago is a waymarked 10-kilometre path between Colonno and Griante, linking the lakeside villages along mule tracks and old lanes. Mostly flat, mostly traffic-free, and easily done in a morning with a ferry back.
When to come
Late April into May for the gardens, or the second half of September once the Milanese have gone home. The ferries still run on the full timetable, the light is long, and the town stops charging August prices.
August is the one month to avoid — hot, full, and no cheaper for it.
