Varenna

Varenna lies on the eastern shore of the lake, opposite Bellagio. The boat docks north of the centre, in the Olivedo area, and from there the Passeggiata degli Innamorati leads into the village along the water. The station is higher up, above the houses.

The centre of the village is Piazza San Giorgio. The parish church of San Giorgio was consecrated in 1313. On the facade is a large Saint Christopher painted in the fourteenth century; inside, columns of black Varenna stone divide three naves, and a triptych of 1467 stands on the high altar. On the same square are San Giovanni Battista, the village's eleventh-century mother church, and Santa Maria delle Grazie, opened in 1685. From the square, narrow lanes and flights of steps run down to the lake between the coloured houses; to the south the villa gardens begin.

In the early twelfth century, in the Ten Years' War between Como and Milan, Varenna sided with Milan, as did the Isola Comacina. In 1169 Como destroyed the island, and most of its people took refuge in Varenna. This is why medieval documents also call the village “Insula nova”, the new island. The exiles brought with them the Patriarchine rite of Aquileia, which gave the people of Varenna their nickname, “Patriarchitt”. The Festa del Lago commemorates their landing.

From the late thirteenth century Varenna was ruled by the Visconti. In 1480 it joined Bellano and Mandello in the Contado della Riviera, a fief granted to Pietro Dal Verme; from 1533 to 1788 the fief belonged to the Sfondrati. The railway from Lecco arrived in 1892. In the twentieth century the village's economy, tied for centuries to the lake and to fishing, turned to tourism.

Villa Monastero grew out of a convent of Cistercian nuns, founded in the late twelfth century and suppressed in 1567. In 1569 Paolo Mornico, from the Valsassina, bought it. Between 1897 and 1909 the German Walter Kees turned it into an eclectic residence; the house museum has fourteen furnished rooms. Marco and Rosa De Marchi left it to the State as a cultural centre: since 1953 it has hosted scientific conferences, and in 1954 Enrico Fermi gave his last lectures here. The botanical garden follows the shore for almost two kilometres, as far as Fiumelatte, among agaves, palms and cedars of Lebanon.

Villa Cipressi, next door, has a terraced garden that steps down to the lake between rows of cypresses. It was built for the Serponti family between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and from 1824 to 1864 it was a hotel. In 1980 the people of Varenna bought it through a public subscription. It is a hotel and the venue for the municipality's civil weddings.

In the territory of Perledo, between Varenna and Bellano, quarries produced Varenna black marble. It is a dark grey limestone with white veins that turns black when polished. It was already used in Roman times, and in the Renaissance it served for frames and mouldings set against white marble. It is also in the floor of Milan Cathedral designed by Pellegrino Tibaldi. The same rock holds fossils of Triassic fish and marine reptiles, among them the Lariosaurus, the subject of an exhibition in the tower of Vezio castle.

On the last Thursday of January comes the Giubiera: a procession goes round the old lanes to chase winter away. In autumn Villa Cipressi hosts the festival of the “Patriarchi”, the elders born in Varenna, including those who live elsewhere. The patron saint is Saint George, whose feast falls on 24 April.

Vezio castle stands above the village, at about 350 metres. From the centre it takes about twenty-five minutes on foot, on a route that is part of the Sentiero del Viandante. From the tower you see the point where the lake splits into its two branches. In summer white plaster figures, moulded on volunteer visitors, appear in the castle.

To the south, a path along the hillside reaches the source of the Fiumelatte in a quarter of an hour; the stream comes out of a cave and runs for about 250 metres to the lake. It usually flows from March to October and is dry in winter; Leonardo described it in the Codex Atlanticus. To the north, the Viandante reaches Bellano in two to three hours, passing the old black marble quarries. The Greenway dei Patriarchi crosses the village and some of its hamlets: six kilometres, about two hours on foot.