Malgrate Lake Como: the lakefront facing Lecco
The village across the water from Lecco, where the lake ends and the Adda begins. How to get there by boat, what to see and when to go, told by the captain.
Malgrate is the village that looks across the water at Lecco, right where Lake Como ends and the river Adda begins. I pass it every time I head in or out of the Lecco branch in my Venetian water taxi. It has a new lakefront that sits low on the water, and from there you see the whole city with Mount Resegone behind it. Most people find Malgrate by chance. I'd send you there on purpose.
Malgrate from the lake: arriving by boat
Coming down the Lecco branch from the north, the lake narrows. On your left is Lecco and its mountains, on your right the houses of Malgrate lined up along the shore, old palazzi and wrought-iron balconies. Straight ahead, the Kennedy bridge closes the view: three concrete spans, a hundred metres long, built between 1949 and 1955 to a design by Arturo Danusso.
The lakefront is what catches your eye first. It steps down to the water in terraces, with wooden pergolas and shallow pools. From the boat it feels close enough to step onto. On festival days you'll also see the lucie here, the traditional rowing boats of Lake Como. When I bring guests here we slow right down and stay close to the shore: it's the angle that makes sense of Malgrate.
A short history of Malgrate
In Roman times there was a settlement here called Antesitum. The present name comes from the Middle Ages: in 1126, during the war between Milan and Como, the little fort of San Grato was taken by surprise one night by the people of Lecco and largely destroyed. After that, so tradition says, Grato became Malgrato, and later Malgrate.
For centuries this was a village of boatmen. Before the Azzone Visconti bridge was built in 1336-1338, Malgrate's harbour was the key crossing between the two shores. A rowing-boat ferry was still running in the 1920s, and only the Kennedy bridge, in the 1950s, finally made it redundant. The 19th century brought the silk mills. The poet Giuseppe Parini stayed here too, and a plaque still remembers it. And Malgrate was the home of Pietro Vassena, the inventor who in 1948 took his bathyscaphe C3 down to 412 metres in the lake, off Argegno.
Things to see in Malgrate, Lake Como
- 01The lakefront promenade
Redesigned between 2009 and 2013 by architect Stefano Santambrogio. You walk a step from the water, facing Lecco, Monte San Martino and the Resegone. At sunset it's a calm place for a bench and a chat.
- 02Palazzo Agudio
Remodelled in 1816-1820 by Giuseppe Bovara, it is now the town hall. A plaque recalls Parini's stay.
- 03The church of San Leonardo
The parish church dates back to the 16th century and was restored in the early 1800s by Bovara himself.
- 04The former Bovara Reina silk mill
On Via Parini, a reminder of the 19th-century silk years, when Malgrate joined the industrial age.
- 05The Plague Victims' Chapel
A small chapel on Via Agudio, tied to the memory of the epidemics Manzoni describes in The Betrothed.
Where the lake turns into a river
Manzoni put it on the first page of The Betrothed, Italy's best-known novel: the bridge joining the two shores marks the point where the lake stops and the Adda begins again. From Malgrate you see that change for yourself. The water slows, the banks close in, and beyond the bridges the river takes over.
When to visit Malgrate
The lakefront is lively all year, but my favourite months are May, June, September and October: clear light, less boat traffic, cool air coming down off the mountains. Malgrate faces east. In the morning the sun is full on its façades; in the evening the village falls into shade while the light stays on Lecco and the Resegone. If you want that shot of the city glowing at sunset, this is the side to be on.
Places near Malgrate
Right opposite is Lecco, the city of The Betrothed. Heading north up the branch you reach Abbadia Lariana and Mandello del Lario beneath the Grigne, and finally the point of Bellagio, where the three arms of the lake meet. If you want Malgrate in your day, the tour for it is the Full Day Dolce Far Niente, a whole day by boat on Lake Como.
