Explore the lake

First Basin116

• TownsComoThe city of silk and rationalist architecture, with the lake reaching right into the centre.
• TownsCernobbioA square on the water ten minutes from Como, and the grand hotel behind the plane trees.
• TownsBrunateThe village above Como, seven minutes by funicular and five hundred metres higher.
• TownsTornoTwo small harbours, the church of San Giovanni with its Romanesque bell tower, and Villa Pliniana just outside the village.
• TownsArgegnoA medieval bridge, a red cable car, and the valley that leads to Switzerland.
• TownsMoltrasioThe village of Moltrasio stone, just past Cernobbio: houses stepped above the mill stream, the Scala Santa running down to the lake and the villas where Bellini lived.
• TownsLaglioFive hamlets of Moltrasio stone on the western shore, where the lake is at its narrowest and deepest: the waterfront with its sculptures, San Giorgio and the boatwrights' yard.
• TownsBlevioThe first village on the eastern shore after Como: seven hamlets on the slope linked by the Strada Regia, and the villas where Giuditta Pasta and Maria Taglioni lived.
• TownsCarate UrioTwo villages joined in 1927 between Moltrasio and Laglio: Carate below Santa Marta and the chapels of its Way of the Cross, Urio with its Romanesque bell tower and the boat pier.
• TownsBriennoTall, narrow houses down to the water below Monte Comana, between Laglio and Argegno: lanes and steps between the houses, the parish church sheer above the lake and, at the far end of the village, the church of the Immacolata on its spur of rock.
• TownsFaggeto LarioA shore on the lake and three villages halfway up the slope, Molina, Lemna and Palanzo, linked by the Strada Regia: churches from Romanesque to the seventeenth century, the gorge, and above it all Monte Palanzone.
• TownsPognana LarioStone houses between the shore and the slopes of Monte Preaola, once a fortified village: the parish church of the Trinity, at Rovasco a church grown from a Lombard oratory, and at Canzaga San Rocco, the old frescoed parish church, above the lake.
• AttractionsSpina Verde Regional Park, ComoThe wooded hill west of Como, a regional park since 1993: thirteen trails of the park authority among Castel Baradello, the remains of proto-historic Como at Pianvalle, the Sant'Eutichio cross and the trenches of the Great War.
• Museums & cultureSanti Martino e Agata, MoltrasioThe parish church of Moltrasio's Borgo, recorded as early as 1207 and lengthened in 1935 with its stone front: inside, frescoes by the Recchi brothers, paintings by Fiammenghino and Alvise Donati's altarpiece of 1507.
• Villas & gardensVilla OlmoThe Odescalchi family's neoclassical villa on the lake at Como, now owned by the city, with a formal Italian garden towards the lake and an English park behind.
• Villas & gardensVilla del Grumello parkThe four-hectare romantic park of a sixteenth-century lakeside villa in Como, at the centre of the Chilometro della Conoscenza; Ugo Foscolo stayed here as a guest of the Giovio family.
• Villas & gardensVilla ErbaLuchino Visconti's childhood villa, now an exhibition centre.
• Villas & gardensVilla BernasconiA silk industrialist's Art Nouveau villa in Cernobbio, decorated with silkworms, butterflies and mulberry leaves: today a municipal museum.
• Museums & cultureComo CathedralComo's cathedral, built between 1396 and 1740, from the Gothic of its facade to Filippo Juvarra's eighteenth-century dome.
• Museums & cultureBasilica of Sant'AbbondioComo's Romanesque basilica, consecrated in 1095, with a nave and four aisles, twin bell towers and an apse frescoed in the fourteenth century.
• AttractionsBaradello CastleThe medieval tower on the Baradello hill south of Como: what remains of the castle of Barbarossa and the Visconti, with a terrace over the city and the lake.
• Museums & cultureBasilica of San FedeleThe three-apsed Romanesque church in the walled town of Como, with its Dragon Portal.
• Museums & cultureSan Giovanni, TornoThe church of San Giovanni in the upper village of Torno, with the Rodari workshop's marble portal under a great horse chestnut.
• Museums & cultureSanta Tecla, TornoThe parish church on Torno's harbour square, with its portal of 1480, frescoes by Bartolomeo de Benzi and a wooden Pietà and mourners.
• Villas & gardensVilla d'Este, CernobbioCardinal Tolomeo Gallio's sixteenth-century villa at Cernobbio, renamed in 1815 by Caroline of Brunswick and a hotel since 1873, with the Hercules avenue and a plane tree over five hundred years old.
• AttractionsPalazzo Lambertenghi, ComoAn early seventeenth-century palazzo in Como's walled town, with a stone portal, an inner garden and, on the ground floor, the hall frescoed in the seventeenth century; it is private and opens only for events.
• Museums & cultureSanta Marta, Carate UrioCarate's first parish church, at the top of a stairway lined with the Way of the Cross chapels of 1752, with a Romanesque bell tower and frescoes from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.
• AttractionsFrank's Pyramid, LaglioA granite pyramid some twenty metres high above Laglio's cemetery: the tomb of the physician Joseph Frank, a pupil of Volta, raised in 1851, with his marble portrait and three Egyptian doors.
• Museums & cultureChurch of San Giorgio, LaglioThe seventeenth-century parish church in the centre of Laglio, with stucco by Stefano Salterio, a native of the village, and a statue of Saint George and the dragon above the door; beside it, the Confraternity oratory with its Madonna of the Rosary.
• AttractionsPini Tomb, LaglioThe tomb Franco Albini designed in 1945 for two children of the Pini family, in Laglio's cemetery: two tall parallel walls with no roof and, between them, two copper angels hanging in the void.
• Museums & cultureSant'Agata, MoltrasioThe Romanesque church on the old Via Regina at Moltrasio, with a nave, one aisle and two apses, a five-tier bell tower and a fresco attributed to Giovanni Andrea De Magistris.
• Museums & cultureSanti Nazaro e Celso, BriennoBrienno's parish church sheer above the lake, rebuilt in Baroque style in the seventeenth century on an eleventh-century chapel: inside, Enea Salmeggia's altarpiece of 1618, a polyptych of 1508 and a supposed tooth of Frederick Barbarossa.

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• Villas & gardensVilla Sucota, ComoThe villa on the road to Cernobbio where the Fondazione Antonio Ratti keeps more than three thousand textile fragments and a library on silk, at the end of the Chilometro della Conoscenza.
• Museums & cultureSantuario del Prodigio, ComoThe ship-shaped sanctuary on the road between Como and Brunate, consecrated in 1968: above, the church of Nostra Signora del Prodigio; below, the shrine of water sports with mementoes of those who go on the water.
• Museums & cultureMuRAC, Air-Raid Shelter Museum, ComoThe museum beneath Como's Red Cross building, with its air-raid and gas shelter of 1937, rescue equipment and documents on the two world wars.
• AttractionsGaribaldi Monument, ComoVincenzo Vela's bronze Garibaldi on Piazza Vittoria in Como, unveiled in 1889 on the spot where the Austrians surrendered in 1848.
• Villas & gardensVilla Pasta and Villa Roccabruna, BlevioThe site of the villa of the soprano Giuditta Pasta, Bellini's first Sonnambula, on the Blevio shore: from the lake you can still see the park and one of the guest houses.
• Villas & gardensVilla Taglioni, BlevioThe villa on the shore at Blevio where the ballerina Maria Taglioni retired, and where in 1769 Emperor Joseph II took shelter when a storm caught him on the lake.
• Villas & gardensVilla Troubetzkoy, BlevioThe steep-roofed villa-chalet built around 1850 on the Blevio shore by the Russian prince Troubetzkoy, nicknamed “turbascogli”, the rock-rattler, for the rock excavations.
• Museums & cultureSanti Gordiano ed Epimaco, BlevioBlevio's old parish church on the shore, with its tall bell tower, a pilastered front and a Prestinari organ of 1821.