The 6 best hidden lake towns you can reach by train in Lombardia

1. Varenna

Best for a small town. 666 people live here.

1 h 2 min from Monza · homes €1,600 to €2,200 a m² in the center · 666 people

Why visit Varenna

Varenna sits on the eastern shore of Lake Como at the point where the lake forks into the Como and Lecco branches, opposite Bellagio and Menaggio. Local fishermen founded the village in 769.

In 1126 it was destroyed by Como during the wars between the lake's communes, and in 1169 it absorbed the refugees from the destroyed Isola Comacina. The streets fall in a steep grid toward the water, with the lakefront passerella running between the houses and the lake.

The Castello di Vezio, above the village on a spur reached by a 30-minute climb, was a Lombard watchpost reused through the Middle Ages. Villa Monastero, on the lakefront, started in the 12th century as a Cistercian convent and now runs a two-kilometer botanical garden along the shore.

The frazione of Fiumelatte hosts one of the shortest rivers in Italy, 250 meters from spring to lake.

The catch: It has lost 17% of its people since 2015.

What to see in Varenna

• Castello di Vezio. Lombard-era watchpost on a spur above the village, reached by a 30-minute climb with 160 meters of elevation gain.
• Villa Monastero. Former 12th-century Cistercian convent on the lakefront, now a museum and convention center with a 2-kilometer botanical garden along the shore.
• Villa Cipressi. Sixteenth-to-nineteenth-century lakefront villa next to Villa Monastero, with terraced gardens descending to the water.

How to get to Varenna

It has its own railway station. Monza is about 1 h 2 min away by road. The full route from Milan.

Everything we know about Varenna

2. Dervio

Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.

1 h 2 min from Monza · homes €1,200 to €1,700 a m² in the center · 2,537 people

Why visit Dervio

Dervio sits on a small peninsula on the eastern shore of upper Lake Como, where the Varrone torrent emerges from its valley and pushes a delta into the lake. The Romanesque bell tower of the Chiesa di San Quirico e Giulitta, attached to a church first mentioned in 814 and rebuilt around 1080, is the oldest structure in the commune.

Above the village, on a cliff that once blocked the road into the Valvarrone, stand the ruins of the Castello di Orezia, raised in the late Middle Ages and recorded in 1039 during a long siege by three Larian parishes. Dervio's reputation today rests less on its monuments than on its wind.

The position at the peninsula tip funnels the Breva and Tivano onto the lake in a way racing sailors learn to read. The commune draws sailing schools from April through October, and its lakefront promenade extends north toward Dorio along a stone path called the Sentiero del Viandante.

What to see in Dervio

• Campanile di San Quirico e Giulitta. Romanesque stone bell tower from around 1080, attached to one of the oldest churches on Lake Como, first cited in 814.
• Torre del Castello di Orezia. Late medieval tower on a cliff above Dervio, part of a fortress blocking the Valvarrone road, with documented siege in 1039.
• Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo. Eleventh-century parish church on the lakeshore, with a Romanesque bell tower and later interventions.

How to get to Dervio

It has its own railway station. Monza is about 1 h 2 min away by road. The full route from Milan.

Everything we know about Dervio

3. Porto Ceresio

Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.

1 h 6 min from Milan · homes €1,200 to €1,550 a m² in the center · 2,820 people

Why visit Porto Ceresio

Porto Ceresio sits on the south shore, 11 kilometers northeast of Varese and directly on the Swiss frontier. The lake is also called Ceresio, a name of uncertain origin that some trace to the Latin word for cherry.

Boats run from the pier across to Lugano and Morcote in Canton Ticino, and the railway from Varese, which reached the lake in 1894, ran on electric power from 1902, among the first lines in Italy to do so. The mountain behind the town covers a tropical sea floor from 240 million years ago, and the 2010 UNESCO extension tied Porto Ceresio to Besano and Viggiù and to the original Swiss site across the water.

The lakefront promenade, with its colored houses, sits between that green mountain slope and the lake itself, looking straight across to the Swiss shore. The town reads as a hinge point: a rail line built to reach the water, a pier built to cross it, and a mountain behind that turns the crossing into a border between two countries and two geological eras.

What to see in Porto Ceresio

• Lungolago di Porto Ceresio. Lakefront promenade with the ferry pier and the colored houses that face Lake Lugano and the Swiss shore opposite.
• Chiesa di Sant'Ambrogio. Parish church in the centro storico, the religious center of the village since the medieval era.
• Monte San Giorgio. Rises to 1,097 meters across the water in Canton Ticino, the world's richest Middle Triassic marine fossil site, its green slopes forming the backdrop to the lake.

How to get to Porto Ceresio

It has its own railway station. Milan is about 1 h 6 min away by road. The full route from Milan.

Everything we know about Porto Ceresio

4. Bellano

Best for a slow weekend. The Touring Club gives it its orange flag for small inland towns.

1 h 2 min from Monza · homes €1,250 to €1,800 a m² in the center · 3,364 people

Why visit Bellano

Bellano sits at the outlet of the Valsassina, on the eastern shore of Lake Como, the point where a inland valley meets the water. By 905 the town was under the Archdiocese of Milan; the Torriani and then the Visconti held it through the Middle Ages, long before the gorge became a destination or the mill brought industry.

The commune joined the Borghi più belli network in 2021, and in 2020 absorbed Vendrogno, a former commune higher up Monte Croce di Muggio, so the modern boundary reaches from the lakefront up into the mountain behind it. The town's identity comes from this stacking of inland and shore: a valley torrent cutting down through the rock, a medieval settlement governed from Milan, a nineteenth-century industrial mill at the gorge mouth, and a lake promenade with ferries to the far shore.

Each layer sits on the last without replacing it, which is why a walk from the pier to the gorge and up toward Vendrogno crosses centuries of the town's uses in a short distance.

What to see in Bellano

• Orrido di Bellano. A slot canyon a few hundred meters long, the catwalks bolted directly into the cliff face so the water runs beneath the visitor's feet on both sides at once.
• Chiesa dei Santi Nazaro e Celso. Fourteenth-century parish church on Piazza San Giorgio, with a rose window and façade in alternating black and white stone.
• Cotonificio Cantoni. The brick chimney still stands at the gorge mouth, the one surviving marker of the mill that once made this a working lakeside town rather than a resort.

How to get to Bellano

It has its own railway station. Monza is about 1 h 2 min away by road. The full route from Milan.

Everything we know about Bellano

5. Laveno-Mombello

Best for a long lunch. A food guide lists La Tavola here.

1 h 14 min from Novara · homes €1,350 to €1,700 a m² in the center · 8,319 people

Why visit Laveno-Mombello

Laveno-Mombello sits on Lake Maggiore's eastern shore in the province of Varese, where a limestone wall drops directly to the water at the town's back. The ferry here crosses to Verbania and the Borromean Islands on the opposite shore, making the town as much a hinge point between Lombardia and Piemonte as a destination in itself.

Cerro, the lakefront hamlet folded into the town, kept the workshops after the ceramics factories closed in the 1990s, and its Palazzo Perabò now holds the museum that charts that industry from 1856 forward. South along the shore, a fifteen-minute drive reaches the monastery built into the cliff face, reachable by stairs, lift or boat where the road does not reach directly.

The town's shape follows the lake and the rock in equal measure: industry and transit at the shoreline, the mountain rising straight behind it, and the monastery holding on to the cliff a short way south as if the same geology that made Laveno a port also made it a place for building into stone.

What to see in Laveno-Mombello

• MIDeC – Museo Internazionale Design Ceramico. Ceramics design museum in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Perabò at Cerro, covering Laveno production from 1856 to the 1990s.
• Sasso del Ferro. Limestone summit reached by the bucket funicular, with a terrace looking across Lake Maggiore to Lago d'Orta and the southern Alps.
• Santa Caterina del Sasso. Fourteenth-century monastery clinging to a cliff above Lake Maggiore, fifteen minutes south, reached by stairs, lift or boat.

How to get to Laveno-Mombello

It has its own railway station. Novara is about 1 h 14 min away by road. The full route from Milan.

Everything we know about Laveno-Mombello

6. Iseo

Best for a day out from Brescia. It is 28 min by car.

28 min from Brescia · homes €2,000 to €2,600 a m² in the center · 8,979 people

Why visit Iseo

Iseo sits at 198 meters on the southeast shore of Lake Iseo, the fourth-largest lake in Lombardia, fed by the Oglio. First recorded in the ninth century as a holding of the Brescian monastery of San Salvatore, the town grew under the Sozzi, the Isei, and finally the Oldofredi.

From 1428 to 1797 Iseo was part of the Republic of Venice. The lakefront and the vineyards to the south form the town's two working halves: one facing the water and the ferries that cross it, the other rising into the Franciacorta hills where the metodo classico grapes are grown.

Ferries from the lakefront connect to Monte Isola, the largest lake island in Italy, and to Sarnico across the water in Bergamo province. A lake town that turned its inland edge to wine and its waterfront to the island: the two directions, water and vineyard, still define how the town is used.

What to see in Iseo

• Castello Oldofredi. The stone fortress stands above the lakefront, its walls facing the water rather than the town center, a reminder that it was built to watch the lake approach.
• Pieve di Sant'Andrea. Founded, by tradition, by Bishop Vigilio of Brescia around 500, the church keeps its bell tower set into the middle of the façade rather than beside or behind it, an arrangement rare among Lombard Romanesque buildings.
• Piazza Garibaldi. Main lakeside square with what is described as the first non-equestrian statue of Garibaldi, by Pietro Bordini, unveiled in 1883, the year after his death.

How to get to Iseo

It has its own railway station. Brescia is about 28 min away by road. The full route from Verona.

Everything we know about Iseo