Portrait·2 min
Stories from the lake
Stories of the lake: its trades, winds, cooking, architecture and life out of season.
8stories
Story·4 min
Why the lake is shaped like a Y
A valley cut by ice, a massif in the middle and a branch with no outflow: the geography of Lake Como and what it means for travellers.
Story·5 min
The villas and the microclimate
The lake's mass of water, the relief, the exposure and the soil explain why camellias, azaleas and olive trees grow on its shores, and why the villas have their gardens there.
Story·4 min
Two hundred years under steam
On 16 August 1826 a twelve-horsepower paddle boat left Como for Domaso. People have travelled the lake by boat ever since, and the routes of those first services are still today's.
Feature·3 min
The Regina, the road of the western shore
The Regina road, from Como to the Swiss border: a route of Roman origin, a name linked to Raetia or to Queen Theodelinda, one lane each way and the Tremezzina bypass in tunnels.
Story·6 min
When the railway reached the lake
In eighteen years, between 1884 and 1902, the lake of the steamers gained a little train between Menaggio and Porlezza, a railway of tunnels along the eastern shore, a funicular and the world's first high-voltage three-phase line. The lines, the trains and what is left of them.
Story·7 min
Leonardo on Lake Como
A spring that rises and falls every six hours, a river that drops sheer into the lake, a hole beneath the mountain of Mandello where there is always ice: Leonardo da Vinci recorded the lake and its valleys in a few lines of the Codex Atlanticus and the Codex Leicester. What he actually wrote, and what has been attributed to him since.
Story·6 min
When the lake comes into town
Piazza Cavour was Como's harbour, and when the lake rises the water comes back into it: the first recorded flood dates from 1431, the highest from 1868, and since 1946 a dam at Olginate has regulated how much water the Adda lets out.
Story·7 min
The stone of the lake
The white marble of Musso, the grey stone of Moltrasio, the black of Varenna and Olcio: the lake gave its stone to its churches and to Como Cathedral, and carried it over the water aboard the comballi. Where it was quarried, where it can still be seen and how it travelled.
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