A Rainy Day on Lake Como: The All-Indoor Route

Rain on Lake Como does something to the mountains that sunshine never manages: cloud tears itself on the ridges, the water goes pewter, and the villages look like the nineteenth-century engravings that made this lake famous in the first place. Here is a day built for it, entirely under cover.

Key facts

• Ferries: passenger boats have enclosed lower decks and run in most weather; check the day's timetable, which changes seasonally.
• Villa season: most historic villas open roughly from spring to autumn and close over winter, and some close one day a week.
• Base: this route works from Como town or from Varenna, both on direct trains from Milan.
• Footwear: village lanes are stone, stepped and slick when wet.

9:30 - Como's Duomo

Start in the cathedral, one of the last great Gothic buildings in Italy and unusual for wearing a Renaissance facade and an eighteenth-century dome on top of a medieval body. It is enormous, dim and quiet, and it swallows an hour easily.

10:45 - Silk and science

Como made its fortune from silk, and the Museo della Seta tells that story with the machinery to back it up: looms, dyeing equipment and printing rollers from the industry that still supplies European fashion houses. Alternatively, the Tempio Voltiano on the lakefront is a small neoclassical rotunda devoted to Alessandro Volta, who was born here and gave his name to the volt, with original instruments on display.

12:30 - Lunch in the arcades

The old centre inside Como's walls is compact and heavily arcaded, so lunch and a wander need little exposure. A plate of lake fish, a glass of something from the nearby Valtellina, and you are ready for the boat.

14:00 - The covered ferry north

This is the centrepiece. Take a passenger ferry up the lake toward Bellagio, Varenna and Tremezzo, and sit inside by a window. In rain the crossing is genuinely better: fewer people, dramatic cloud on the mountains, and villa gardens rising out of the mist.

15:30 - A villa, from the inside

At Varenna, Villa Monastero's house museum keeps fourteen furnished rooms open to visitors, an eccentric layering of styles collected across centuries. Across the water at Tremezzo, Villa Carlotta's neoclassical interiors hold sculpture including work by Canova's circle, which makes it the better indoor call when the celebrated gardens are a write-off.

17:30 - Aperitivo under an awning

Varenna's waterfront terraces are almost all covered. Order a spritz, watch the rain move down the lake, and wait for the return boat.

19:30 - Dinner back at base

Return by ferry or, from Varenna, by train if you are heading to Milan. Both options are indoors end to end.

If the sky clears

Take the funicular from Como up to Brunate. After rain the air is scrubbed clean and the view down the lake is at its sharpest.

Tip: Buy a central-lake day pass rather than single tickets. It costs little more than two crossings, lets you hop off whenever a shower stops, and turns the ferry itself into your shelter for the afternoon.