How to get from Milan to Lake Como

Milan has three airports in common use for the lake and they are in three quite different places, which is the whole of the decision. Malpensa lies north-west of the city and carries most of the long-haul traffic. Linate sits on the eastern edge of Milan and is the closest of the three to the centre, with a shorter-haul network. Bergamo Orio al Serio is east of Milan, near Bergamo, and is where much of the low-cost traffic goes.

The instinct is to choose on flight schedule and then solve the ground leg. That is the wrong order if you are going anywhere north of the city of Como, because the ground leg is the variable part of the journey and the flight is not. Malpensa sits on the correct side of Milan for the lake and is the airport that most often produces the simplest transfer for the western shore. Linate's advantage is proximity to the city rather than to the lake, which matters if you are spending a night in Milan first. Bergamo puts you on the wrong side of Milan for the Como branch, though it is not an unreasonable option for the eastern shore and the Lecco approach.

Whichever you choose, the airport is rarely the constraint. What determines the journey is which shore you are going to, at what hour and in which month. On the western shore it also matters whether the last stretch involves the Strada Regina at a bad time of the day or the year.

If you are coming into Switzerland rather than Italy, the north-western corner of the lake is close to the border, and the road west from Menaggio over towards Porlezza and Lake Lugano is a genuine route into the mid-lake rather than a curiosity. It is worth considering for anyone whose flights work better into Switzerland than into Milan.

There are two approaches to the lake by road and they serve different halves of it. One runs north from Milan to Como and then up the western shore; the other runs north-east to Lecco and then up the eastern shore. They do not usefully connect at the top of the branches, because the promontory is in the way, so the choice has to be made before you leave rather than adjusted en route.

The motorway part of either journey is straightforward and roughly predictable. The part that is not is the last stretch on the shore. On the western bank that means the Strada Regina, which is the only through route, is narrow, walled and tunnelled in places, and is reduced to one sensible speed by its geometry. It carries residents, deliveries, coaches and the whole summer flow towards the top of the lake, and a single vehicle in the wrong gallery halts the entire shore. Distance on that road bears almost no relation to time between June and September.

The eastern lakeside road north from Lecco is broader and faster, and it runs through a long sequence of galleries cut into the rock. It carries more commercial traffic than the western shore but far fewer coaches, and it reaches Varenna without the western road's pinch points. If your destination is the eastern shore or Centro Lago via the ferry, it is usually the better drive.

The last complication is what happens at the end of the drive. Most of these villages have no parking to speak of, several have historic cores you cannot drive into at all, and on the steepest shores a house may have no vehicular approach: you arrive at a gate on the road and go down by steps. Establish where a car actually stops before you set off with one.

Rail reaches this lake usefully in two places, and it is worth being exact about them because most published advice is vague.

Varenna-Esino-Perledo, on the MilanLeccoSondrio/Tirano line, sits above the village of Varenna on the eastern shore. It is the only station serving a lake village directly: you arrive, walk down to the water and are at the ferry pier. From there the car ferry crosses to Bellagio, Menaggio and Cadenabbia, which puts three more of the lake's principal addresses within a short crossing without a car ever being involved. For a great many people this is the best way to reach the lake from Milan, and it is a structural advantage Varenna holds over every comparable village.

The city of Como has two stations. Como San Giovanni sits on the MilanChiasso line, which continues over the Swiss border; Como Lago sits at the lake end of the city and serves Milano Cadorna. Between them they put the city, its waterfront and the shores immediately either side of it within reach without driving, and they are the usual railhead for the lower western shore, with a short onward leg by car or boat.

Everything else is a connection. No village on the western shore has a station, and none on the eastern side of the Como branch does either. The standard pattern is rail to Varenna or to Como, then car or water for the last part. Service patterns and interchanges change, so check the current timetable rather than any figure you read on a page like this one.

The single most useful thing to understand about arriving here is that the lake has two networks running in parallel, and the busy one is on land. Car ferries cross the centre of the lake between Bellagio, Varenna, Menaggio and Cadenabbia, and passenger services run down both southern arms and up the northern reach. On an August Saturday the shore road is the slowest thing on the lake and the water is empty.

For anyone heading to Centro Lago, the practical arrangement is often to reach a railhead or a landing on one shore and cross rather than to drive round, because driving round means going down one branch, through a city and up the other side. The crossing is short. The drive is anything but.

For houses on the steep shores, which include much of the eastern side of the Como branch and stretches of the western bank where the mountain comes close to the water, a private transfer by boat is frequently the only sensible way to arrive with luggage, because the alternative is a flight of steps between the road and the door. Being met at a jetty is a solution to a specific problem here rather than a flourish.

The constraint is the timetable and the weather. Public services thin considerably outside high season, the last boat of the day is earlier than most people assume, and the northern part of the lake picks up wind that can make a small-boat transfer uncomfortable or impractical. All of that is checkable in advance and almost nobody checks it.

Arriving directly by helicopter is possible and it is more constrained than people expect. The constraints are not commercial but physical and regulatory: the lake is a steep-sided trench, landing sites are few and mostly private, the ground available at any given villa is usually terraced rather than flat, and noise is regulated in a way that reflects how densely inhabited these shores are.

Weather is the other limit, and it is the one that catches people. Low cloud sits in the branches for days at a time in spring and autumn, and the wind behaves differently at the top of the lake from the way it behaves at the bottom. A helicopter transfer that works perfectly in July can be unavailable on the specific October morning you need it, and the fallback has to exist before it is needed.

There is also a seaplane tradition on this lake, which is genuine rather than decorative. It operates under its own set of conditions and constraints, and it is a memorable way to see the geography of the branches from above whether or not it is the way you arrive.

For any of these we would arrange it rather than send you to a website, principally because the ground arrangements at the far end are the part that determines whether it works: where you actually land, who meets you, and what happens if the weather closes in.

The lower western shore, taking in the city of Como, Cernobbio, Moltrasio and the villages immediately north, is the shortest and most predictable transfer on the lake, and it is the reason a certain kind of owner keeps a house there rather than at the more beautiful end. Malpensa by road, or rail to one of the two Como stations, and a short onward leg.

The lower eastern shore, from Blevio through Torno and Nesso to Lezzeno, is reached from Como along the eastern lakeside road, and several of its villages sit below the road rather than on it. For a house on that bank, arriving by water from Como or Cernobbio is frequently the better arrangement.

Bellagio, Varenna, Menaggio and the Tremezzina shore make up Centro Lago, the longest approach and the one with the most options. Rail to Varenna and then the ferry is the cleanest route without a car. By road, the eastern approach through Lecco is usually the more reliable of the two, with the crossing at the end.

For the northern reach beyond Menaggio, and for anything approached from Switzerland, the western road over from Porlezza and Lugano is worth looking at properly rather than dismissing. Our individual location pages set out the arrival arrangements village by village.

Saturday in August. High-season changeover concentrates arrivals and departures into the same hours on the same roads, and the western shore in particular cannot absorb it. If your dates are fixed, move the transfer to the morning or the evening rather than the middle of the day, and consider approaching Centro Lago from the eastern side and crossing.

Luggage. The stepped villages are stepped all the way, several houses have no vehicular approach at all, and the walk from the nearest place a car can stop is a real distance with cases. This is the most common single reason a well-planned arrival unravels, and it is entirely avoidable by asking one question in advance.

The last connection. Late flights into any of the three airports leave you making the last part of a journey at an hour when the ferries have stopped and the shore road is dark and narrow. On a late arrival it is usually better to stay near the airport or in Como and come up in the morning than to arrive at a lake house at one in the morning.

And the assumption that a transfer can be arranged on the day. In high season it frequently cannot, at either end of the journey, and a small station on the eastern shore is not a place with cars waiting outside it. Arrange the ground legs before you fly.