It is the road that runs from Como up the western shore of the lake to the Swiss border.
The road along the western shore of the lake is the SS340, known as the Regina: from Como to the Swiss border at Valsolda it runs for just over fifty kilometres. It has one lane in each direction, stretches where two coaches cannot pass without stopping, tunnels that bypass Cernobbio and Brienno, and villages it crosses between the houses. Its continuation, the 340 dir, runs from Menaggio to Gera Lario for another twenty-nine kilometres of the same kind. This is why the western shore is best travelled by boat.
A Roman road with a Lombard name
The Regina is narrow because its route is old. It dates from Roman times, the first century, when a road linked the river port of Cremona to Chiavenna through Milan and Como and up the shore of the lake: it was the road to Raetia, the province beyond the Alps, and the name probably comes from via Raetia. Tradition instead credits Queen Theodelinda, who reigned over the Lombards around the year 600. Medieval documents call the road via Regia from 1256; the statutes of Como of 1335 are the first to write via Regina. For fifteen centuries it was a paved mule track, used by mules, pilgrims and merchants, not by carts.
This is why the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century villas have their portico and boathouse facing the lake, not a gate on the road: guests arrived by boat. In 1826, when the steamboat came to the lake, the Regina was still a mule track.
The villas have their portico towards the lake and a boathouse, not a gate onto the road: guests arrived by boat.
The tunnel that goes round it
Between the villas of Tremezzo and the houses of Sala Comacina the road cannot be widened. In December 2019 Anas awarded the contract for the Tremezzina bypass, designed to divert through traffic away from the villages. The planned route is about 9.8 kilometres long between Colonno and Griante, almost all in tunnels. It includes two main tunnels, the Comacina and the Tremezzina, each over two and a half kilometres long, shorter ones and a viaduct over the Val Perlana.
How to use it
Park once, in Como, Cadenabbia or Menaggio, and travel on by boat from there: the car ferry leaves from Cadenabbia, and the scheduled boats call at every village the road passes through. The C110 bus from Como to Colico runs the whole length of it. By bicycle, the road is narrow, has no cycle lanes and goes through the Cernobbio and Brienno tunnels.
Historical events linked to this story are collected in the Lake timeline.
