Lombardy

Milan, the regional capital and Italy's second-largest city, stands on the plain in the west of Lombardy, between the Ticino and the Adda. Its cathedral and roof terraces, Leonardo's Last Supper, La Scala, the Pinacoteca di Brera, the Castello Sforzesco and the canals of the Navigli fill two or three days, and its trade fairs and fashion shows mark the busiest weeks of its year.

Monza, a short train ride north of Milan, keeps the Iron Crown of Lombardy, used for centuries to crown the kings of Italy, in its cathedral's chapel of Queen Theodelinda, which is painted with fifteenth-century scenes from her life. North of the centre, the Villa Reale, a neoclassical palace built for the Habsburg archduke Ferdinand in the late eighteenth century, faces its gardens, and behind it the walled Parco di Monza stretches along the Lambro, with woods, meadows, paths for walking and cycling, and the motor-racing circuit in its northern part.

Lombardy holds the eastern shore of Lake Maggiore, from Sesto Calende, where the Ticino leaves the lake, north past Angera, Laveno and Luino towards Switzerland; Stresa and the Borromean Islands lie on the Piedmont side. The Rocca Borromeo, a medieval castle, looks down on the lake from its crag above Angera, and near Leggiuno the hermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso clings to the cliff just above the water. A car ferry crosses from Laveno to Intra on the Piedmont shore. Inland, Varese lies below the Sacro Monte, where a cobbled path climbs past fourteen chapels to the hilltop village of Santa Maria del Monte, part of the UNESCO listing of the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.

Como lies at the south-western tip of Lake Como, about an hour from Milan by train, and its walled old town gathers round the marble cathedral, begun in 1396 and crowned with its dome in the eighteenth century, beside the striped Broletto, the old town hall. The boats up the lake leave from the waterfront by Piazza Cavour, a promenade runs west past lakeside villas to the park of Villa Olmo, and at the eastern end of the shore a funicular climbs to Brunate, a hill village with views down the lake and, on clear days, to the Alps.

North of Como the lake forks like an upside-down Y, and Bellagio, its lanes stepped up from the waterfront, stands at the tip of the promontory between the two southern arms. Varenna, a cluster of coloured houses below the castle of Vezio, has a station on the railway along the eastern shore, and a car ferry and passenger boats link it with Bellagio and with Menaggio on the western shore. South of Menaggio, the gardens of Villa Carlotta at Tremezzo flower with azaleas and rhododendrons in April and May, and Villa del Balbianello stands on a wooded point at Lenno; both open to visitors from spring to autumn. Off Ossuccio lies Isola Comacina, the lake's only island. At the foot of the eastern arm, Lecco is the town where Alessandro Manzoni set the opening of The Betrothed.

From the northern end of Lake Como, the Valtellina runs east along the Adda between the Rhaetian Alps and the Orobie, followed by the railway from Milan to Sondrio and Tirano. On the south-facing slopes of its northern side, vineyards climb on dry-stone terraces, where Nebbiolo, called Chiavennasca here, makes the red Valtellina Superiore and Sforzato, pressed from grapes dried after the harvest. Tirano, near the Swiss border, gathers round the pilgrimage basilica of the Madonna di Tirano, and from its station the red trains of the Rhaetian Railway climb over the Bernina Pass to St Moritz, past glaciers and high lakes, on a line that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the Albula line.

At the head of the Valtellina, Bormio is an old town of stone lanes and towers, with thermal baths fed by its hot springs and lifts to its ski slopes. It is the gateway to the Stelvio National Park: from Bormio the road to the Stelvio Pass climbs a long ladder of hairpins to 2,757 metres on the border with South Tyrol and descends the far side into Trentino-South Tyrol. The pass is closed in winter, as is the Gavia, which runs south from Santa Caterina Valfurva into the Valcamonica. North of Bormio, over the Foscagno Pass, Livigno lies in a high valley at about 1,800 metres near the Swiss border, a ski and snowboard resort in winter and a base for walking and mountain biking in summer.

Bergamo, under an hour north-east of Milan by train, is two towns: the lower town round the station, and the Città Alta on its hill, enclosed by the walls the Republic of Venice built in the sixteenth century, which are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and make a promenade with views over the plain. A funicular climbs to the upper town, whose stone lanes lead to Piazza Vecchia, with the arcaded Palazzo della Ragione and the civic tower, and behind it to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, rich in baroque stucco and gilding inside, and the marble-fronted Colleoni Chapel, the tomb of the mercenary captain Bartolomeo Colleoni. A second funicular continues up to San Vigilio, and the Accademia Carrara, the city's picture gallery, stands below the walls.

East of Bergamo, Lake Iseo lies between steep, wooded hills, with the town of Iseo at its southern end and Lovere at its northern. Monte Isola rises from the middle of the lake, an island of olive groves, chestnut woods and fishing villages reached by a short boat crossing from Sulzano or Sale Marasino; visitors leave their cars on the mainland. North of the lake, the Valcamonica follows the Oglio up into the Alps, and its rock faces carry many thousands of figures engraved over several thousand years of prehistory — hunters, deer, warriors, ploughs, huts and maps. The rock drawings were the first site in Italy on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and in the parks around Capo di Ponte, among them Naquane, paths lead past the engraved rocks.

Brescia, between Bergamo and Lake Garda, keeps the forum of Roman Brixia at its heart: the columns of the Capitolium, the temple built under Vespasian in 73 AD, stand on Via dei Musei beside the remains of the Roman theatre. Along the same street, the Santa Giulia museum fills a monastery founded in the eighth century by Desiderius, the last king of the Lombards, and with the Capitolium it belongs to the UNESCO listing of the Lombards' places of power in Italy. The round Romanesque Duomo Vecchio stands beside the later cathedral, and a castle crowns the Cidneo hill above the town. West of the city, the hills of Franciacorta roll up to the southern shore of Lake Iseo, planted with the vineyards of the sparkling wine of the same name, made by the traditional method with its second fermentation in the bottle.

Lombardy holds the south-western and western shores of Lake Garda, Italy's largest lake; the eastern shore belongs to the Veneto and the northern tip to Trentino-South Tyrol. Sirmione reaches into the lake on a narrow peninsula. Its old town is entered across the moat of the Rocca Scaligera, a castle rising from the water; at the tip, the ruins of a large Roman villa, the Grotte di Catullo, lie among olive groves; and sulphur springs feed the town's thermal baths. Up the western shore, the Vittoriale degli Italiani, the house and gardens of the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, terraces down the hill above Gardone Riviera, and further north, where cliffs fall sheer to the water and the road runs through tunnels, the stone pillars of old lemon houses stand on terraces above Limone sul Garda. Boats link the shore towns and cross the lake.

Mantua lies on the plain in the south-east of the region, enclosed on three sides by lakes the Mincio forms, and closer to Verona than to Milan. The Palazzo Ducale of the Gonzaga is a town within the town of courtyards, gardens and halls; in its Castello di San Giorgio, Andrea Mantegna painted the Camera degli Sposi with the family and court, below a ceiling oculus where figures lean over a painted sky. At the southern edge of the centre, Giulio Romano's Palazzo Te holds the Sala dei Giganti, where giants tumble among walls painted falling from floor to vault, and between the two palaces stands Alberti's basilica of Sant'Andrea. South-west of Mantua, near the Po, Sabbioneta is a small ideal town laid out by Vespasiano Gonzaga in the second half of the sixteenth century inside bastioned walls, and it shares Mantua's UNESCO World Heritage listing.

Cremona, on the Po south-east of Milan, is the town where the violin took its classical form: Andrea Amati made instruments here in the sixteenth century, and Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù in the seventeenth and eighteenth. The Museo del Violino shows instruments by the Cremonese masters, luthiers still work in many workshops across the town, and its traditional violin-making is on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage. Piazza del Comune gathers the Romanesque cathedral, its octagonal baptistery, the town hall and the Torrazzo, the cathedral's brick bell tower, more than 110 metres high, with an astronomical clock on its face and a long stair to the top.

Pavia, on the Ticino about half an hour south of Milan by train, is a university town: the university, founded in 1361, fills arcaded courtyards along Strada Nuova, and the Ponte Coperto, a covered bridge, crosses the river. San Michele Maggiore, a Romanesque church of sandstone carved with beasts, saw Frederick Barbarossa crowned king of Italy, and San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro holds the marble tomb of St Augustine. A few kilometres north, the Certosa di Pavia, the Carthusian monastery founded by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1396, fronts its church with a façade of carved and inlaid marble. West across the Ticino lies the Lomellina, rice country whose fields are flooded in spring, and in Vigevano the arcaded Piazza Ducale, closed at one end by the curved front of the cathedral, opens below the Sforza castle.