Stories from the lake

Stories of the lake: its trades, winds, cooking, architecture and life out of season.

Portrait·2 min

The Lucie, the boats with hoops

Manzoni described them without naming them, and ever since they have carried his heroine's name. They are still on the water, and every summer they race.

Graziano Cannoletta · CC BY-SA 4.0

Feature·5 min

The olive coast

Oliveto Lario takes its name from the olive, and for centuries the oil of this stretch of the Lecco branch burned in the lamps on Saint Ambrose's tomb. Today it has a protected designation, rules that forbid calling it “superior”, and a path that runs through the groves.

Feature·7 min

The Cadorna Line on the Lario

Forts, tunnels, trenches and military roads in the mountains above the lake guarded routes to the plain against a possible invasion through Switzerland. This front was not attacked during the First World War. At Colico, Forte Montecchio Nord retains its guns beneath their steel domes.

Story·7 min

The smugglers' lake

The paths between the Lario valleys and Switzerland were used by smugglers carrying tobacco, salt and coffee. Museums in Cavargna and Erbonne preserve objects from this trade and from border surveillance; some barracks have been converted into mountain huts.

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·6 min

The red sweaters of the Grignetta

Above Lecco a mountain of towers and spires has been its climbers' school for a century: from there Riccardo Cassin set off for the great walls of the Alps, and in 1946 a group of young men founded the Ragni della Grignetta, with the red sweater and the seven-legged spider.

Story·8 min

The monks' lake

Benedictines on the mountain above Civate, in the Val Perlana and in Como, Cluniacs at Piona, Cistercians at Acquafredda and nuns at Varenna: for more than a thousand years the lake had its monasteries, and nearly all of them were given in commendam, fell into ruin or became villas. Only one has monks again.

Story·8 min

The Medeghino, lord of the lake

Banished for a murder, castellan of Musso, corsair on the lake, a marquis entitled to mint coins and in the end one of the emperor's generals: for nine years Gian Giacomo Medici made the lake a small state of his own, until his castle was dismantled.

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