Places to see in Lake Como

A terraced villa on a wooded promontory, reachable by boat or a woodland walk, with loggias framing the lake in three directions. The most photographed garden on Como and deservedly so. Numbers are managed and the garden and house are ticketed separately. Half a day with the crossing.

A lakeside house at Tremezzo with a botanical garden climbing the slope behind it — azaleas and rhododendrons in spring are the reason to time a visit for April or May. Canova sculpture indoors. Directly across the water from Bellagio and easy to combine by ferry.

The lake's only island, small, wooded and scattered with the ruins of a town destroyed in the twelfth century and never rebuilt. A short boat hop, an hour to walk, and a very different register from the villa circuit. Boats are seasonal.

Fourteen baroque chapels climbing a hillside path through olive terraces to a sanctuary, with the lake below the whole way. A world heritage site, free, and almost never busy. About an hour up at a walking pace, and the view back down is the reward.

An English-style garden along the water at Bellagio, flatter and calmer than the other two and walkable straight from the village. Plane trees, a Japanese garden and a chapel. An hour, and the least crowded of Como's three famous gardens.

A gorge cut by the river behind Bellano, walked on gangways bolted to the rock a few metres above the water. Loud, cool and about half an hour. The eastern shore it sits on is the working side of the lake and much cheaper to eat on than the western one.