The Hidden Villages of Lake Como’s Western Shore: A Local’s Walking Guide

The eastern shore gets the ferries. The western shore keeps the secrets.

Most visitors to Lake Como follow a well-worn triangle: Bellagio, Varenna, Menaggio. They board the ferry at Como’s waterfront, cross the lake in the midday glare, and return with photographs of the same coloured houses that appear in every travel guide published since 1987. The western shore — the left-hand side of the lake as you look north from Brunate — rarely enters the conversation. Which is precisely why it should.

From Hotel Paradiso Como, the western shore is not a day trip. It is a slow unfolding. You descend by funicular to Como, drive or take the bus along the SS340 — the old lakeside road that hugs the water’s edge — and within fifteen minutes, the crowds disappear. What remains are fishing villages built on rock, Romanesque churches with doors that haven’t been locked in centuries, and a quality of light that painters understood long before photographers arrived.

Cernobbio: where grandeur meets the ordinary

The first town north of Como on the western shore is Cernobbio, known mostly for Villa d’Este and the annual Ambrosetti forum. But step one street back from the lakefront and you find a village that has nothing to do with five-star lobbies. Narrow stone alleys climb away from the water, past laundry lines and window boxes of geraniums, toward the Romanesque church of San Vincenzo. The espresso at the bar in the piazza costs two euros and comes with a view of the lake that Villa d’Este charges considerably more for.

The old Strada Regia — the royal road that once connected Como to the northern villages — begins here. It is a footpath now, paved in stone, shaded by chestnuts, and almost entirely empty. Walking it in the early morning, you hear your own footsteps and the lake below, and little else.

Moltrasio and Laglio: the lake’s quiet rooms

Beyond Cernobbio, the villages grow smaller and the road grows closer to the water. Moltrasio was Vincenzo Bellini’s refuge when he composed La Sonnambula in 1831 — the house still stands, unmarked, because in this part of the lake, history does not advertise itself. The church of Sant’Agata, built in the eleventh century, sits at the water’s edge with the particular dignity of a building that has watched the lake for a thousand years and found it consistently interesting.

Laglio, a few kilometres further, became briefly famous when a certain American actor bought a villa here. The paparazzi came, stayed for a season, and left. The village returned to its business of being impossibly beautiful without trying. The waterfront is barely wide enough for a single table outside the bar, and the swimming is from the rocks, and the light in late afternoon does something to the stone walls that makes you understand why Renaissance painters were obsessed with this lake.

Brienno and Argegno: the road less ferried

The road past Laglio narrows to a single lane in places, carved into the cliff face above the water. Brienno appears suddenly — a village of fewer than four hundred people, stacked vertically against the mountainside, accessible by car but designed for feet. There is one restaurant, one church, and a waterfront that consists of a stone quay where fishermen still moor their boats. This is the Lake Como that existed before tourism was an industry.

Argegno, where the valley of Intelvi opens into the lake, has the energy of a place that serves as a crossroads without having become a destination. The old stone bridge over the Telo river, the cluster of houses in faded ochre and terracotta, the tiny harbour where the ferry from Bellagio occasionally calls — it is a village that rewards the specific pleasure of arriving without expectations.

Walking back into the evening

The western shore is best experienced as a morning walk and an afternoon return. By the time you reach Argegno, the light has shifted, the shadows have changed sides, and the lake looks entirely different from the direction you’ve come. The drive back to Como takes thirty minutes. The funicular takes seven. And then you are in Brunate again, at 700 metres, looking down at the entire shore you’ve just walked — the villages now miniatures, the lake a single shimmering surface, the western mountains gold in the late light.

This is the particular gift of staying at Hotel Paradiso Como: you explore at lake level and return to sky level. The territory becomes intimate — you’ve walked its paths, sat in its churches, eaten at its tables — and then you see it from above, and it becomes vast again. The heated pool is warm. MamaGina’s kitchen has been preparing dinner since morning — the pasta made by hand, the bread baked fresh, the cakes cooling on the counter. The western shore, quiet and ancient, settles into your memory like a place you’ve always known but never visited.

Book the Late Summer Escape package: 3 nights at Hotel Paradiso Como with a guided lake excursion included. Only on hotelparadisocomo.com.