Walking Lake Como, village by village
3 July 2026
Lake Como gets photographed from boats and driven around in a day, and both miss the point. The villages along its shores — stacked between mountain and water, threaded with stone staircases too narrow for cars — were built to be walked. Each one takes under an hour on foot, which makes the lake less a single destination than a string of short walks connected by ferries. Here’s how to take it village by village.
Bellagio — beyond the postcard staircase
Everyone photographs Salita Serbelloni, the flower-lined staircase in the centre; fewer people walk five minutes past it into the fishing hamlet of Pescallo or up to the Punta Spartivento, where the lake’s three arms meet. Bellagio rewards exactly one extra turn beyond where the crowd stops. The walks in Bellagio take you there.
Tremezzo and Lenno — the villa shore
The west shore between Tremezzo and Lennois where the 18th-century aristocracy competed in gardens: Villa Carlotta’s terraces, the Balbianello peninsula you may recognise from more than one film. A lakefront path — the greenway — links the villages at exactly walking pace, with the mountains of the far shore as a backdrop the whole way.
Como — the city the lake is named for
Como itself gets skipped by visitors sprinting for the ferries, which is a mistake: inside its Roman-grid old town are a marble striped cathedral, silk-trade palaces, and a funicular that hauls you up to Brunate for the best cheap view in Lombardy. An hour’s walk before your boat leaves is enough — start with the walks in Como.
Domaso and the quiet north
Past the ferry-hub villages the crowds thin fast. Around Domaso and Gravedona the lake turns local: Romanesque churches, windsurfers instead of influencers, and lakefront paths where the loudest thing is the water. If the south of the lake felt like a queue, the north is the antidote.
How to walk it
The ferry timetable is your friend: pick two or three villages a day, and treat the boat rides as the rest between walks. Each village walk runs 15 to 45 minutes, so download them before you set off — signal is patchy between the mountains — and let the narration start playing as you step off the jetty. PodWalk has ready-made walks across the lake, or generate your own for whichever village the ferry drops you in next.
