Field Guide No. 04 · Lake Como, Italy
Most people arrive at Lake Como having chosen a hotel and not having chosen a position. The position is the decision that matters.
Como is shaped like an upside-down Y: two long southern arms, one ending at the city of Como and one at Lecco, and a third running north into the Alps. They meet at a promontory in the middle. Where you sleep on that shape governs how many ferries you can take, how much time you spend on a narrow walled road behind a bus, and whether the lake feels like a holiday or a logistics problem.
And then there is the choice everyone actually asks me about, which is between the two great historic hotels. They are both superb. They are also genuinely different propositions, and picking the wrong one for your trip is an expensive way to have a slightly wrong week. Rates and seasonal opening dates move. Treat every number here as illustrative.
The argument
Twenty kilometres on a map here can be an hour in the car. It is fifteen minutes on a boat.
The middle of the lake, where the three arms meet, is called the centro lago, and it is where nearly everything you came to see is concentrated: Bellagio on the point, Varenna facing it from the eastern shore, Menaggio and the Tremezzina villages on the west, and the great villas and gardens strung between them. Across that short triangle of water, passenger ferries run constantly through the season. From a base inside it, most of the lake is reachable without ever getting into a vehicle.
Outside that triangle the calculation inverts. The lakeside roads are eighteenth-century routes with walls on both sides, hairpins, buses coming the other way and nowhere to pass. In July they clog. A drive that looks like twenty minutes becomes an hour, and it becomes an hour every single time you want to do anything. This is why so many people come home saying the lake was beautiful but they spent the week in the car. They were based on an arm rather than in the middle, and no hotel is good enough to fix that.
So the order of decisions is: position first, property second. Almost everyone does it the other way round.
The main event
These are the two names, and the reason the choice is hard is that neither is better. They are aimed at different weeks. Here is how I actually decide between them for clients.
A sixteenth-century cardinal’s villa that has been a hotel since the 1870s, set in a large formal park on the lower western shore, a few minutes from Cernobbio and not far from the city of Como. The grounds are the point: an avenue of plane trees, a mosaic nymphaeum climbing the hillside, and gardens on a scale that no other property on the lake can match. The floating pool moored on the water in front of the hotel has been photographed for a century.
The register here is formal, in a way that is now genuinely rare. Evenings expect you to dress, the service is old-school and hierarchical, and a substantial part of the clientele has been coming for decades and books the same room. For the right guest that continuity is precisely the product, and no new hotel can manufacture it.
It also sits closest to Milan and its airports, which makes it the easier choice for a short stay, a stopover, or a trip where the lake is two nights bolted onto a city itinerary.
Choose it whenYou want gardens, grandeur and tradition, you like dressing for dinner, you are short on time or coming straight from Milan, or you are travelling with a generation that will recognise and value what this place is.
An Art Nouveau palace from 1910 on the western shore, mid-lake, looking directly across the water at Bellagio with the Grigne mountains rising behind it. That view is, in my honest assessment, the best from any hotel on Lake Como, and it is the single strongest reason to choose it. There is a pool floating in the lake, more pools on the terraces above, a serious spa, and Villa Carlotta’s botanical gardens essentially next door.
The mood is warmer and less starched than Cernobbio. It is a grand hotel that people photograph rather than a grand hotel that people whisper in, and for a first trip, a honeymoon, or anyone who wants the lake without the formality, that is the better fit.
The position is the underrated advantage. Sitting in the centro lago means the ferry network does the work: Bellagio, Varenna and Menaggio are all short crossings, and the villas are close. The property also has an eighteenth-century villa of its own nearby that can be taken privately, which is a strong answer for a family or a group that wants a house with a hotel behind it.
Choose it whenThe view matters most, it is a first trip or a honeymoon, you want to use the ferries rather than a car, or you want the grand hotel experience without the dress code.
The rest of the bench
Lake Como has had a genuine hotel renaissance over the last decade, and several of the newer properties are as good as the historic pair on every measure except history. A few are better on some of them.
The towns
On the promontory where the arms divide, and deservedly the famous one: stepped alleys, silk shops, and the gardens of Villa Melzi along the water. It is also the single most day-tripped spot on the lake, and between about ten in the morning and five in the afternoon in summer it belongs to coach groups. Staying there is the answer to that, because the town at breakfast and after six in the evening is genuinely lovely and almost nobody sees it.
Facing Bellagio from the eastern shore, smaller, and to my eye prettier: an ochre waterfront, a lakeside walk pinned to the rock, and the gardens at Villa Monastero. Its decisive practical advantage is the railway station, with a direct line to Milan in about an hour, which makes a genuinely car-free trip easy to build. For a lot of clients this is the smart base.
The western shore of the centro lago. Menaggio is a working town with a good ferry position and better rates. The Tremezzina, running south through Tremezzo, Cadenabbia and Lenno, is the villa-and-garden stretch: Villa Carlotta and Villa del Balbianello are both here, and the Greenway footpath links the villages.
Elegant, close to Como and Milan, and quieter than the centro lago. Excellent for a short stay. Weaker for ferry-based days, because the frequent crossings are all further north.
Como is a real city with a remarkable Duomo, a silk-making history and a funicular up to Brunate for the view. It is a good arrival or departure point and a poor base, because it is at the bottom of an arm and the beautiful part of the lake starts half an hour north. The Lecco arm on the other side is dramatic, much less visited and thin on places to stay, which makes it a rewarding drive and an awkward base.
Logistics
The public ferry network across the centro lago triangle, linking Bellagio, Varenna, Menaggio and the Tremezzina shore, runs frequently through the season and takes ten to twenty minutes a hop. Car ferries run on the same routes and hydrofoils cover the longer north and south legs. Based inside the triangle, you can spend a week seeing the lake properly and never start an engine.
The lakeside roads are narrow, walled on both sides, and shared with buses. There is very little opportunity to overtake and almost nowhere to park in the popular towns. In high summer the western route in particular slows to a crawl. If you rent a car, expect to leave it at the hotel for most of the week, and check that the hotel has parking before you book one at all.
This is the best thing to do on Lake Como and it is not close. A classic wooden launch with a driver for a few hours, out into the middle where the villas and the mountains line up, with a swim off the back and a stop somewhere for a drink. Every good hotel arranges them. It is also frequently the fastest way to get between two points on opposite shores.
Milan Malpensa is generally the most convenient airport for the lake, with Linate and Bergamo also workable, and Lugano just over the Swiss border for the northwest. By rail, the direct train from Milan to Varenna takes around an hour and is a genuinely pleasant way to arrive. Private transfers by road from Malpensa run roughly an hour to the lower lake and longer to the centro lago, and hotels will arrange a boat for the final leg where it makes sense.
The days themselves
Lake Como is a short list done well rather than a long list rushed. Three or four things, spread across four or five days, with a lot of sitting and looking in between, is the correct density.
Late April through June, and September into early October. May is the peak of the gardens and the most beautiful moment of the year on the lake, with warm days and the mountains still holding snow. September gives the warmest water and thinner crowds. July and August bring heat, the heaviest day-trip traffic, and roads at their worst. A great many of the best hotels close for the winter, so a shoulder-season trip needs the property confirmed as open before flights are booked, not after.
The other half of the job
The most common way to see Lake Como and the most reliable way to be underwhelmed by it. A day trip gets you a coach, a crowded midday hour in Bellagio, and none of the mornings or evenings that are the actual reason to come. If the calendar only allows a day, I would rather send someone somewhere else entirely and save the lake for a trip that can give it three nights.
Como is a pleasant small city at the bottom of one arm. The scenery people book flights for begins well north of it. Staying there and commuting to the good part is a common and avoidable mistake.
Beautiful town, wrong hour, wrong month. Go at eight in the morning or after six in the evening and it is a different place entirely.
Como has a great many properties advertising lake views that are technically accurate and practically disappointing: across the main road, up a flight of steps, through trees, from a balcony you would not sit on. On this lake more than most, the specific room and its aspect are worth confirming rather than assuming, and that is a large part of what I do here.
Questions I get
The next step
Tell me how long you have and whether you want to dress for dinner, and the grande dame question mostly answers itself. What takes longer is the aspect of the specific room, which on this lake is the difference between the view you were promised and the view you get. Planning is complimentary.
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