Como in a day, on foot

Six stops on foot, none more than half an hour from the last, and the funicular to finish.

1. Transfer: Train40 min· Milano Centrale → Como San Giovanni, then a quarter of an hour on foot

   Morning

   

   Piazza del Duomo: the Broletto, the cathedral, the Casa del Fascio

   The Broletto, the commune's palace an inscription says was finished in 1215, wears bands of white, grey and red marble and has three triple windows: from the left one the authorities addressed the citizens. Beside it, the cathedral, begun in 1396 and closed in 1740 by Juvarra's dome, with the two Plinys seated on the facade; behind the apse, the Casa del Fascio, the half-cube of marble and glass Giuseppe Terragni built between 1933 and 1936.

2. Transfer: On foot20 min

   Morning

   

   Across the walled town to Sant'Abbondio

   You pass San Fedele, Romanesque, with its three apses in a cloverleaf and the Dragon Portal carved with dragons and chimeras, and leave the walls under Porta Torre, forty metres built in 1192 for those arriving from Milan. Ten minutes further on, in Via Regina Teodolinda, stands Sant'Abbondio, consecrated in 1095: five naves, twin bell towers and an apse frescoed in the fourteenth century with the life of Christ.

3. Transfer: On foot15 min

   Lunch

   Lunch inside the walls

   Back into town through Porta Torre. Between Piazza San Fedele and Piazza Volta, where Pompeo Marchesi's statue of the scientist has stood since 1838, the pedestrian streets have tables for every kind of lunch, from a sandwich to a restaurant.

4. Transfer: On foot20 min

   Afternoon

   

   The waterfront of Volta and Terragni

   From Piazza Cavour the breakwater leads out into the middle of the first basin, to the steel sculpture Daniel Libeskind dedicated to Volta in 2015. Back on shore, the Tempio Voltiano, built in 1927 and opened in 1928, keeps the scientist's original instruments and relics in a neoclassical rotunda, and takes half an hour to visit. Beside it rises the 1933 Monument to the Fallen, thirty metres of pale stone from a design by Antonio Sant'Elia, and a little further on stands Terragni's Novocomum, finished in 1929, which the people of Como call the Transatlantico.

5. Transfer: On foot15 min

   Afternoon

   

   The walk to Villa Olmo

   From the Novocomum the shore runs west to Villa Olmo, the neoclassical palace the Odescalchi marquises built at the end of the eighteenth century, now owned by the town and used for exhibitions. The Italian-style garden lies in front of the villa, facing the lake; the English-style park is behind it. If there is time, continue towards Villa del Grumello, checking access to the parks.

6. Transfer: On foot30 min

   Evening

   

   Brunate at sunset

   Walk back along the lake to Piazza De Gasperi, where the funicular, running since 1894 and electrified in 1911, climbs to Brunate in seven minutes on gradients of up to 55%. Up there you look down on the town and the first basin, five hundred metres above the waterfront you started from.