The Italian Lakes, from Lake Maggiore to Lake Garda

Lake to lake, from Milan to Verona

Between Milan and Verona, the road runs from one lake to the next, at the foot of the Alps. It first follows Lake Maggiore, from Arona to Stresa. At Arona, the statue of St Charles Borromeo, the San Carlone, was finished in 1698. It stands 35 metres tall with its pedestal, and you can climb inside all the way up into the head. At Stresa, boats run out to the Borromean Islands.

These lakes fill valleys carved out by glaciers. The water tempers the winter: olive and lemon trees grow at the foot of the mountains. After Lake Lugano and Lake Como, you leave the water for Bergamo, which belonged to Venice from 1428 to 1797. Its 16th-century walls run for six kilometres around the Città Alta. They are on the Unesco World Heritage list, as is the fortress of Peschiera, on Lake Garda.

Lake Garda, the largest in Italy, comes last. Its west shore is in Lombardy, its east shore in the Veneto, and its northern tip was Austrian until 1918. The Scaligeri, lords of Verona, built their castles around it. At Gardone, D’Annunzio had the prow of a cruiser set up in the grounds of his villa, the Vittoriale.

The lake is shaped like an upside-down Y, with Bellagio at the fork. The shore roads are narrow, and car ferries link the villages from one shore to the other. At Varenna, colourful houses ring a little harbour. Close by, the Fiumelatte, the ‘river of milk’ described by Leonardo da Vinci, runs only 250 metres before it reaches the lake.

Ticino, Italy in Switzerland

Between Lake Maggiore and Lake Lugano, the road crosses Ticino, Switzerland’s only wholly Italian-speaking canton. It crosses the border at Brissago, where the lovers in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms row in from Stresa. Every August, the Locarno festival screens films in the open air on the Piazza Grande. Above the town, a funicular climbs to the Madonna del Sasso, a sanctuary that has clung to the rock since the late 15th century.

Melide, Capolago and Bissone are small villages on Lake Lugano. Domenico Fontana, born in Melide, raised the Vatican obelisk. His nephew Carlo Maderno, born in Capolago, built the façade of St Peter’s. Borromini came from Bissone. Several builders of Baroque Rome were born on the shores of Lake Lugano.

What not to miss

1. 1The roofs of Milan’s DuomoYou walk among the spires, on Candoglia marble that once came down Lake Maggiore by boat.
2. 2Villa CarlottaMore than 150 varieties of rhododendron and azalea, in flower in spring, facing Bellagio.
3. 3MorcoteArcades along the water and flights of steps up to the church of Santa Maria del Sasso.
4. 4SirmioneThe Scaliger castle, its fortified harbour, and a Roman villa that tradition ascribes to Catullus.
5. 5Monte BaldoFrom Malcesine, a cable car with rotating cabins climbs to 1,760 metres.
6. 6The Verona ArenaThe Roman amphitheatre where opera has been staged every summer since 1913, the wars aside.

The Italian Lakes in pictures

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The Madonna del Sasso, clinging to the rock above Locarno and Lake Maggiore.

The lakes’ table

Here the fish comes from the lake: risotto with perch fillets and whitefish. On Lake Como, people eat missoltini, shad dried and pressed with bay leaves. They are served grilled, with polenta. In Ticino, the grotti, old cellars built against the rock, serve cured meats and cheeses with a glass of merlot.

Bergamo has its casoncelli, stuffed ravioli. Its ‘polenta e osei’ is a cake covered in yellow marzipan and topped with chocolate birds. Around Lake Garda, you taste the olive oil, the lemons from the limonaie, the old lemon houses of Limone, and the wines of Lugana and Bardolino; in Verona, risotto all’Amarone.