Lake Como history makes more sense from the water. For centuries the lake was a road: Roman boats, medieval fleets and the first steamers all travelled it. And the novel every Italian reads at school opens on the water too. The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni begins right here on Lake Como, in the Lecco branch.
I cross this lake every day in a wooden Venetian water taxi. Guests tend to ask me the same things: who built that villa, why nobody lives on that island, which branch is Manzoni's. So I've put the answers in order, more or less the way I tell them on board.
Larius: the Romans and Pliny's villas
The Romans called it Larius. Virgil, in the Georgics, names it among Italy's great lakes: te, Lari maxime. In 59 BC Julius Caesar refounded the town on the lakeshore as Novum Comum, and Como has stayed there ever since, at the foot of the western branch.
Both Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger were born in Como. The Younger wrote to a friend that he owned several villas on the lake and had two favourites. One sat high on the rocks, looking down on the water: he called it Tragedy. The other touched the lake: he called it Comedy, and said you could fish almost from your bed, as if from a little boat. Nearly two thousand years later, that still holds for some houses on Lake Como.
Nobody knows exactly where they stood. Tradition places Tragedy on the headland of Bellagio, the one that splits the two branches. Pliny's name also lives on at Villa Pliniana in Torno, built from 1573 around a spring he described in another letter: water that rises and falls three times a day. Leonardo da Vinci studied it and wrote about it in his notebooks. From the boat you get a good view of the white villa with the waterfall behind it; inside is private, it's not open for visits.
Isola Comacina, the fortress in the middle of the lake
Isola Comacina is the only island on Lake Como, and it's where you feel the history most. In the 6th century it was a Byzantine stronghold: its commander, Francio, held out against the Lombards until 588. In 1169 troops from Como, allied with Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, razed it to the ground.
The survivors fled to the opposite shore, to Varenna, which for a while was known as Insula nova. The island stayed almost deserted for centuries. Today it's an archaeological site, with the ruins of early medieval churches among the trees and three artists' houses designed by Pietro Lingeri in the 1930s. In late June, for the feast of St John, fireworks over the water still recall the fire.
Arriving by boat, you see straight away why it was a fortress. It sits very close to the Ossuccio shore, yet that strip of water is enough to cut it off from everything. On a quiet day, at the landing stage, all you hear are birds and water against the hull.
The noble villas: a lake of cardinals and marquises
From the 1500s the great families of Como and Milan began building along the shores. In 1568 Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio had a summer residence built in Cernobbio: today we know it as Villa d'Este. In the late 1600s the Milanese Marquis Giorgio Clerici built what would become Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo. At the end of the 1700s Cardinal Angelo Maria Durini turned an old Franciscan convent on the Lavedo point into a retreat and added the loggia of Villa del Balbianello.
These villas were designed to be seen from the lake. At Villa Carlotta, the main entrance was the one on the water until the mid-20th century. Come in by boat and the staircases, terraces and façades all face the right way, the way they were meant to be seen. From the road you often get little more than a gate.
The Betrothed and Lake Como: that branch turning south
Alessandro Manzoni set his novel in 1628, in the villages around Lecco. He grew up there: the family villa at Caleotto, where he spent his childhood and youth, is now a museum. The first page is a description of the lake, and every Italian who studied it at school knows it by heart. In a 19th-century English translation it reads:
That branch of the Lake of Como, which turns toward the south between two unbroken chains of mountains, presenting to the eye a succession of bays and gulfs, formed by their jutting and retiring ridges, suddenly contracts itself between a headland to the right and an extended sloping bank on the left, and assumes the flow and appearance of a river.
Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed (19th-century English translation)
From the boat, you read that page with your eyes. Heading down the Lecco branch, the mountains close in, one bay folds into the next and at the end the lake really does narrow until it becomes a river again. The old bridge over the Adda in Lecco is the Ponte Azzone Visconti, built between 1336 and 1338. Above the town rises the Resegone, which Manzoni compares to a saw because of its row of jagged peaks.
"Farewell, mountains": Lucia leaves home by boat
The most famous page of the book is also set on the water. In Chapter VIII, on the night of 10 to 11 November 1628, Renzo and Lucia escape from Don Rodrigo by boat. Lucia rests her forehead on the side of the boat and says goodbye to the places she loves, beginning with the mountains rising from the water. Italians simply call it the Addio, monti.
Tradition ties that departure to Pescarenico, the fishermen's quarter where Fra Cristoforo's convent stood, now the church of Santi Materno e Lucia. A statue shows the two young people fleeing in their boat. Off Lecco in the evening, with the engine idling and the water still, you understand why Manzoni put that farewell right there: from the lake you see the mountains all together, side by side, just as he lists them.
Manzoni's places in Lecco to see on foot
- 01Pescarenico
The old fishing village, the only part of Lecco named in the novel. Lanes around Piazza Era, colourful houses and wooden boats along the Adda.
- 02Villa Manzoni at Caleotto
The house where the writer spent his childhood and youth. Today it's a museum about his life and work.
- 03Acquate and Don Abbondio's church
Here is the church of San Giorgio, pointed out as the one of the wedding that never happened, and one of the two supposed houses of Lucia. From the courtyard you can see the Zucco hill, where Don Rodrigo's mansion is said to have stood.
- 04Olate
The other supposed house of Lucia, not open to visitors. Nobody knows for sure where Manzoni pictured her home, and maybe that's for the best.
The 1800s: steamers, writers and grand hotels
In 1826 the Lario, the first steamboat on Lake Como, entered service: this year marks two hundred years. From then on the lake was easier to reach, and people came. Stendhal, Byron, Franz Liszt, who spent three months in Bellagio in 1837 with Marie d'Agoult. Rossini composed Tancredi at Villa Pliniana.
The villas changed owners and purpose. In 1843 Princess Marianne of Prussia gave Villa Carlotta to her daughter Charlotte as a wedding present, and the villa still bears her name. In 1873 Villa d'Este was turned into a hotel, with Verdi among its first guests. The lake of the nobility opened up to travellers and took on the shape we still see from the water today.
How to see Lake Como history by boat
In one day you can cover almost everything in this article: the Lecco branch of The Betrothed, Bellagio and Varenna in the central lake, Isola Comacina and the villas of the Tremezzina. That's the route of our Full Day Dolce Far Niente boat tour, eight hours with stops wherever you like. If you only have half a day, on the four-hour Grand Tour we pick a piece of the story together.
Villas, museums and the island have seasons and opening hours that change every year, and some visits must be booked ahead: always check the official websites before you set off. My favourite seasons are spring and autumn. Fewer boats, clean air, and Manzoni's mountains stand out sharp, one by one.
Full Day Dolce Far Niente
From the branch of The Betrothed to Isola Comacina, past the great villas: on the Full Day Dolce Far Niente we retrace Lake Como's history in a single day, at your pace.