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There are two ways to get to the ruins of the Castle Vezio, high on the mountainside above Varenna. One is by a footpath, said to take forty minutes to walk. We had hired a car, so drove up steep, narrow, twisting roads that would give even Lewis Hamilton a bit of a fright. But [...]

At Lake Como, conventional holiday categories are blurred. For example, picturesque old towns that provide accommodation at night are also sightseeing attractions during the day. And transportation around the Lake by boat and bus is also a kind of sightseeing, because in the course of taking passengers from A to B, they provide some of [...]

There are a number of specialised museums around Lake Como, some of which will interest a wider audience: Como produces almost all of Europe’s silk, supplying every Italian designer you can think of, and two former factories have been converted into museums. One is the Museo didattico della Seta di Como, at Via Castelnuovo 1, [...]

The first thing that strikes you about the Abbey of Piona is the atmosphere, which is calm and peaceful, but not oppressive. This has a lot to do with the way the buildings are constructed, with a mixture of different kinds of stone. The front of the church in particular changes its style of masonry [...]

There is a book available in some shops at Lake Como, called ‘Ville e giardini del Lago di Como’. It’s translated into English on the cover as ‘Villas and Gardens by Lake Como’. By villas, the book means what we would call mansions, country houses or even palaces – huge buildings with well laid out [...]

The most important villas for most visitors to Lake Como include the Villa Olmo in Como, the Villa D’Este and Villa Erba in nearby Cernobbio, the Villa del Balbianello near Lenno, Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo, Villa Monastero in Varenna and the Villas Serbelloni and Melzi near Bellagio. They stand out because of their size, position [...]

The Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo is possibly the only, and certainly the best known, villa on the Lake to provide visitors with ticketed access, on a ‘free range’ basis, to both ‘house’ and gardens. The neo-classical building is described by one guide book as ‘sober’. But that certainly doesn’t apply to the external steps – [...]

The unit of electromotive force – the ‘volt’ – is named after Count Alessandro Volta, who was born and lived much of his life in Como. The fact that he was honoured in this way by his fellow scientists indicates the significance of his scientific achievements, which are too many and too complex to go [...]