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.

From Milan (BGY), about 1h 42m by car.

Turin (TRN) is about 2 hours away.

By car from the centre of Brescia 2 hours.

There is a railway station in the comune, so you can arrive without a car.

Coming from Milan or Turin?

Coming by train into Milano Centrale? Laveno-Mombello is about 1h 15m away by road.

Every town within reach of Milan airport.