Without a car
Lombardy by train
24 towns
Towns in this region where we confirmed an active station. Check the timetable before you go: a station on the map is not the same as a useful service.
Bellano
Province: Lecco · 202 m
An eastern shore town where the Pioverna cut a gorge through fifteen million years of rock before reaching the water.
Bergamo
Province: Bergamo · 249 m
A two-city Lombard capital where a Venetian walled hilltown sits 85 meters above its modern twin on the plain, 45 kilometers northeast of Milan.
Cassinetta di Lugagnano
Province: Milano · 120 m
A commune west of Milan with fifteen surviving ville di delizia and Italy's first zero-growth urban plan, adopted in 2007.
Chiavenna
Province: Sondrio · 333 m
An Alpine town at 333 meters on the Mera river, the historical Splügen Pass crossroads named for its key position and its rock-cellar crotti.
Darfo Boario Terme
Province: Brescia · 218 m
A spa town where the Oglio leaves the mountains for the plain, next to one of Italy's oldest rock-engraving sites.
Dervio
Province: Lecco · 220 m
A peninsula on upper Lake Como's eastern shore at the Varrone delta, with a Romanesque bell tower and one of the lake's best sailing winds.
Gorgonzola
Province: Milano · 132 m
The town that gave its name to the cheese, a 21,000-resident commune 24 km east of Milan and the documented birthplace of Gorgonzola DOP since AD 879, now the eastern terminus of Milan's M2 metro line.
Iseo
Province: Brescia · 198 m
The main town on the southeast shore of Lake Iseo, gateway to the Franciacorta sparkling wine country.
Laveno-Mombello
Province: Varese · 200 m
The eastern Lake Maggiore port town that produced Lombardia's industrial ceramics for a century, under the cliff that hangs over it.
Lonato del Garda
Province: Brescia · 188 m
A hilltop commune on the southwestern Garda morainic ridge, with a Visconti castle and a private library of 52,000 volumes.
Lovere
Province: Bergamo · 200 m
An amphitheater town at the north end of a Lombard lake, in Borghi più belli since 2003, holding Canova plasters inside the Accademia Tadini.
Mantova
Province: Mantova · 19 m
A Gonzaga capital at 19 meters, encircled on three sides by lakes the Mincio formed in the twelfth century, UNESCO-listed together with Sabbioneta since 2008.
Monte Isola
Province: Brescia · 600 m
The largest lake island in southern and central Europe, 4.5 square kilometers in Lake Iseo, with no cars and eleven fishing villages on its shore.
Monteviasco
Province: Varese · 928 m
A near-abandoned mountain frazione of Curiglia con Monteviasco at 928 metres above the Veddasca valley, historically reached only by an aerial cable-car since 1989 (since suspended) or a 1,400-step stone staircase, with permanent population in the single digits.
Pizzighettone
Province: Cremona · 46 m
A walled town on the Adda below Cremona, where Francis I of France was held for fifty days in the Torre del Guado after Pavia.
Porto Ceresio
Province: Varese · 271 m
The Italian port on the southern shore where the Swiss border runs through the water below Monte San Giorgio.
San Benedetto Po
Province: Mantova · 19 m
A former river island whose entire existence traces back to the Benedictine abbey founded on it in 1007.
San Pellegrino Terme
Province: Bergamo · 358 m
A Liberty-era spa town in the Val Brembana, built around sulfur springs that give the world its mineral water.
Sarnico
Province: Bergamo · 197 m
A medieval lake town at the southern tip of Lago d'Iseo, where the Oglio leaves the lake and Liberty villas line the shore.
Soncino
Province: Cremona · 88 m
A walled borgo on the Oglio, held by a brick Sforza fortress and a printing house that once worked in Hebrew.
Sondrio
Province: Sondrio · 307 m
The capital of Valtellina at 307 meters, where Castel Masegra watches over terraced vineyards that produce Sassella and Grumello Nebbiolo.
Teglio
Province: Sondrio · 856 m
A Valtellina hilltown at 856 metres whose Latin name gave the entire valley its own.
Tirano
Province: Sondrio · 441 m
A Valtellina town at 441 meters where a railway from across the border reaches Italy, beneath terraced Nebbiolo vineyards.
Varenna
Province: Lecco · 220 m
A fishing village founded in 769 on the Lecco arm of Lake Como, with a steep grid of streets falling into the water.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.