Lake Como in Autumn: A Three-Day Guide

Lake Como does not ease you in. You come up from Milan by train, the track bends around a hill, and suddenly it is just there: flat and silver, ringed by mountains that fall straight into the water. We gave it three days in late October, staying in Como town at the southern tip, and left convinced that is exactly the right amount of time and the right base. Long enough to settle into the rhythm of the lake. Short enough that you never stop noticing it.

Base yourself in Como town

You are not meant to stay in a single village on Como. The lake is too spread out and the fun is in moving. Como town, at the southern end, is the practical choice: it has the train connection to Milan and Malpensa airport, the main ferry hub, real restaurants and shops that stay open off-season, and prices a notch below Bellagio. We took an apartment a few blocks up from the water, and our mornings started slow, with a cappuccino and a cornetto on the balcony before heading down to the boats.

Breakfast on Como is less a meal than a reason to sit and look at the water for an hour.

Live on the ferries

The single best thing you can do on Lake Como costs about fifteen euros. The ferry network loops between the towns all day, and a day pass lets you hop on and off as you like; a single crossing runs under five. Sit on the open back deck. The villas slide past with their gardens tumbling down to private jetties, the wake fans out behind you, and you understand very quickly why this lake has been a status address since the Romans.

The villages worth your time

Bellagio gets the postcards and earns them: pastel buildings stacked up stepped alleys, grand hotels facing the water at the point where the lake splits in two. It is busy even in the shoulder season, so go early. Varenna, across the water, is the quieter counterweight, with a lakeside Lovers Walk, the gardens of Villa Monastero, and Vezio Castle on the hill above. Menaggio and the smaller landings are where the trip really settled, the kind of places with a piazza, a church right on the water, and no line for anything.

A church right at the waterline, and the kind of piazza where you can always find a table in October.

Back in Como town, ride the Como-Brunate funicular, a seven-minute climb to a village on the ridge with a panorama over the whole southern basin. Down at lake level, the striped marble Cattedrale di Como and the gardens of Villa Olmo are both worth an hour. And duck into the small churches when you pass them. We wandered into one off a side street with no line and no ticket booth and stood under a painted ceiling four hundred years old.

The interiors you stumble into by accident, and the alleys that make you glad you left the map at home.

Autumn is the secret season

Late October and early November are Lake Como at its most honest. The plane trees along the promenades turn gold and drop their leaves a few at a time, the afternoon sun comes through them low and sideways, and the summer crowds are simply gone. It is ten degrees cooler than July and about a tenth as busy. Bring a layer for the evenings and you trade almost nothing for a lake you get to have to yourself.

What to eat

The lake has its own food, and it is worth seeking out: missoltino, a sun-dried lake fish, and risotto with perch fillets are the classics you will not find far from the water. But some of the best meals were the simplest, a bowl of pasta eaten slowly at a lakeside table while the waiter told us, unprompted, exactly where to be for sunset. Save room for gelato, and on a warm afternoon in Bellagio, eat it on the steps by the water.

Lunch and second lunch. This is the correct ratio of pasta to gelato for a day on the lake.

The waiter was right about the sunset. On our last evening we walked out past the cafes to where the promenade runs out of railing and watched the whole lake go pink, then copper, then dark, the mountains flattening into silhouette while the water held the last of the color.