Lake Como has a remarkable new museum. And it isn't about villas.

It is easy to forget this.

Look at Lake Como through the modern lens and everything seems to be about villas, boats, hotels and increasingly expensive lunches.

But this has never simply been a holiday destination.

Silk was made here.

Furniture was designed here.

Industry grew beside the water.

And in a factory squeezed between a mountain and the lake at Mandello del Lario, some of the world's most recognisable motorcycles have been built for more than a century.

That factory has just undergone a transformation.

And the result gives us a very good reason to visit the eastern side of the lake.

Moto Guzzi was founded in 1921 and remarkably still builds motorcycles in Mandello del Lario today.

Rather than abandon its historic home for an anonymous industrial estate, owner Piaggio has done something considerably more interesting.

It has rebuilt around it.

Almost five years of work and more than €50 million have transformed the original site into a modern factory, museum and cultural destination.

The project was led by American architect Greg Lynn.

The factory has grown to around 38,000 square metres and its potential production capacity has increased to more than 30,000 motorcycles a year.

But the part that interests us most isn't hidden behind the factory gates.

It has been deliberately opened up.

The new Moto Guzzi Museum occupies around 3,000 square metres.

Inside are more than 160 restored motorcycles telling a story that begins with the original G.P. prototype and runs through racing machines, military motorcycles, cinema, travel and modern production.

There are some serious machines here.

Moto Guzzi won 14 world championship titles before withdrawing from Grand Prix racing in 1957.

Its extraordinary 500cc V8 racing motorcycle remains one of the most ambitious pieces of motorcycle engineering ever created.

But this isn't simply a collection of old bikes lined up in glass cases.

The architecture deliberately connects the museum with the factory.

From parts of the exhibition you can look directly onto the new assembly lines and watch motorcycles being built.

Past and present are literally happening on opposite sides of the glass.

This is where the project becomes much more interesting.

There is a restored historic wind tunnel.

There are two new tree-lined public squares.

There is a raised terrace.

A café.

A large Motoplex store.

An auditorium.

Spaces for workshops and events.

And pedestrian routes that allow visitors to look into the working factory.

More than 4,200 square metres have been given over to spaces accessible to the public.

It feels less like an industrial refurbishment and more like the creation of a new cultural quarter inside a working factory.

The opening was not exactly quiet.

More than 60,000 people descended on Mandello del Lario for the Moto Guzzi World Days at the beginning of September.

Around 40,000 visited the new Moto Guzzi home.

The museum itself recorded approximately 30,000 admissions.

On the Saturday, 1,500 Moto Guzzis travelled in procession from Lecco to Mandello.

For a town with a population of around 10,000 people, that is quite an invasion.

But there is something rather wonderful about the relationship between Moto Guzzi and Mandello.

This isn't a company that happens to have a factory here.

Its identity is inseparable from the place.

One of its current motorcycles is even called the V100 Mandello.

Lake Como itineraries have become increasingly predictable.

Bellagio.

Varenna.

Villa Balbianello.

A wooden boat.

Lunch.

Repeat.

All of those things are worth doing.

But places become considerably more interesting when you understand what actually happened there.

Mandello offers something completely different from the grand villas of the western shore.

This is industrial Italy.

Engineering.

Design.

Racing.

Manufacturing.

And a company that has been making machines beside the same lake since 1921.

Even if motorcycles leave you entirely cold, the architecture, design and history make this worth considering.

Mandello sits south of Varenna and north of Lecco, making it particularly easy to combine with an eastern-shore day.

It also has its own railway station on the Milan-Lecco-Sondrio line.

That makes this one of those rare Lake Como attractions where arriving by train actually makes life easier rather than more complicated.

Visit the museum in the morning.

Walk down towards the lake.

Have lunch in Mandello.

Then continue north towards Varenna or south towards Lecco.

Or don't.

There is a tendency on Lake Como to assume every day needs to involve three villages and two boats.

Sometimes one town is enough.

There is another reason to go now.

Until 30 September, Moto Guzzi says the factory and museum will be open every day except Tuesday, from 10am until 5.30pm.

After the opening celebrations, visits can be booked either as a free factory visit or as a combined factory and museum experience.

A full-price museum ticket is €12, with reduced tickets available for several groups including Moto Guzzi owners.

The timing is rather good.

September is when Lake Como begins its transition from high summer.

The lake is still alive, but the intensity begins to soften.

Mandello gives you somewhere genuinely new to explore while everyone else is queueing for a ferry to Bellagio.

There are effectively two Lake Comos.

There is the one the world sees.

Grand hotels.

Rivas.

Villas.

Weddings.

Champagne on terraces.

Then there is the lake that actually lives here.

Factories.

Workshops.

Family businesses.

Engineering.

Design.

People making things.

The two have always existed beside one another.

The new Moto Guzzi museum may be one of the best places on the lake to see them meet.

A 105-year-old motorcycle company has spent more than €50 million making sure its future remains exactly where its past began.

Mandello del Lario.

Between the mountain and the water.

Exactly where it should be.