Lombardy

Those are what most itineraries take, but the region is considerably wider than either. Lombardy is one of Italy’s twenty regions and the most populous of them, running from the Po plain in the south to the Swiss Alps in the north, with Milan as its capital. Beyond the city and the lake shores it holds Bergamo and Brescia where the plain meets the foothills, Mantua and Cremona and Pavia down towards the Po, and the long Valtellina valley climbing east from Como towards the mountain passes. A first visit will reasonably take Milan and one lake; a second is where the rest of it starts to open up.

They are long, deep, glacial lakes with roads squeezed along their shores and public boats doing much of the moving, so the practical answer depends on what you want. Como is the dramatic one — steep sides, villa gardens, and the car ferry crossing between Varenna, Bellagio and Menaggio that is genuinely the best way to see it. Garda is the largest and is shared with two other regions; its Lombard western shore is warmer, busier and more Mediterranean in feel. Iseo is the small quiet one between them and lies wholly inside Lombardy. Whichever you choose, check the ferry timetable before building a day around it, because it thins a great deal outside the summer months.

It can, and one of the packages this page supports does exactly that, but it is a compressed day. The train reaches Como or Varenna easily enough, and that leaves a few hours on the water before the return. What gets lost is the part people remember: the lake in the early evening once the day visitors have gone, when the light comes down the sides of the valley and the ferries are half empty. If the lake is a significant reason for the trip, a night on the shore changes it completely. If it is one stop among many, the day trip is a reasonable compromise rather than a mistake.

Either works, and which one suits depends on whether you want the evening. The upper town sits on a hill above the modern city, is reached by a funicular that is itself part of the pleasure, and is enclosed by Venetian walls that form part of a UNESCO-inscribed network of fortifications. Inside them the Piazza Vecchia and the medieval Palazzo della Ragione make a compact set piece you can walk in an afternoon. It is close enough to Milan for a half-day and quiet enough in the evening to justify staying, and it has the additional practical merit of being where a good number of low-cost flights actually land.

Two to four, and the shape matters more than the number. Two nights buys one lake properly, which for most first visits means Como with a night on the shore rather than a rushed day return. A third adds either Bergamo, which is quick and close, or Mantua, which is further and quieter and suits anyone who prefers Renaissance courts to fortified towns. A fourth is best spent going up rather than across — the Valtellina and the Alpine passes are a different landscape entirely. Beyond that the trip is better served by moving on to the Veneto or Piedmont, which are separate legs.

Because it is a wide, low basin closed in by mountains on three sides, which is a more continental arrangement than most people expect of northern Italy. In summer the humid air sits over the plain with nowhere to go, which is why the heat feels heavier here than the temperature suggests. In winter the same enclosure traps cold air and the Po valley fog forms and settles, sometimes for days at a time — a long-standing feature of the region rather than an occasional nuisance. The lakes are the exception that proves it: their deep water moderates their own shores enough that lemon and olive grow beside Garda at a latitude that has no business supporting them.