Lake Como is shaped like an upside-down Y, with two long southern arms splitting around the wooded promontory where Bellagio stands. Steep forested mountains drop straight into the water on every side, so there is no shore road for much of it and the villages sit wherever a stream built a small delta. The lake is 46 kilometres long and rarely more than four wide, which makes it feel like a river valley filled to the brim. At over 400 metres it is the deepest lake in Italy and one of the deepest in Europe, though only the third-largest by area. Glaciers grinding down the Adda valley gouged the basin during the Ice Ages, far deeper than any river could. Along the shore, generations of the wealthy raised villas with terraced gardens of cypress, camellia and azalea. Pliny the Younger already kept two favourite houses here in Roman times.
The lake is best met from the water. Ferries criss-cross between Bellagio, Varenna and Menaggio, and each landing opens onto somewhere distinct — Bellagio's steep stone staircases hung with flowers, Varenna's narrow waterside lane, the sculpted terraces of Villa del Balbianello. Several of the great villas open their grounds, and the paths climb between cypress and camellia to terraces with the whole lake below. Through the day the water changes: mountains half-lost in morning mist, deep blue at noon, copper at sunset. In summer the ferry terminals at Bellagio and Varenna are jammed from morning to night, and the lakeside road is worse. April to June and September to October are when the lake feels most like itself. Como is a working place as well as a holiday one: the city at the southern tip is still an industrial silk town.