Como tourist attractions

Como Cathedral took almost four centuries to build: work began in 1396 on the site of the Romanesque church of Santa Maria Maggiore and ended in 1770, when the dome designed by Filippo Juvarra was completed. The marble facade, raised between 1457 and 1498, frames its main portal with statues of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, both born in Como. Inside hang tapestries woven in the late 16th century in Ferrara, Florence and Brussels, alongside paintings by Bernardino Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari. The Broletto, the town hall of 1215, stands against its facade.

Location: Piazza del Duomo, Como

Access: Free entry to the nave; a ticket covers the transept, sacristies and balconies

Piazza Cavour is where the old town opens onto the water, a broad square of cafes facing the main boat piers, with the wooded slope of Brunate rising across the bay. From here the lungolago runs west past the Tempio Voltiano, the Monumento ai Caduti and the gardens of Villa Olmo, and east along Viale Geno to the fountain off Villa Geno, a flat walk with the lake alongside all the way. Just off the square, the Diga Foranea breakwater leads out over the water to Life Electric, the steel sculpture dedicated to Alessandro Volta.

Location: Piazza Cavour and Lungo Lario Trento, Como

Access: Free, open at all hours

The Como-Brunate funicular has climbed the hillside east of the city since 1894, driven by steam until the line switched to electric traction in 1911. The track is 1,084 metres long, its first 130 metres in a tunnel, and the ride takes about 7 minutes, with the two cars leaving Como and Brunate at the same time. Once out of the tunnel, the view opens over the rooftops, the dome of the Duomo and the first basin of the lake. There is an optional intermediate stop at Carescione.

Location: Piazza Alcide De Gasperi, Como (valley station)

Access: Ticketed; runs daily from 6:00 to midnight; closed for planned works from 9 to 27 November 2026

Brunate sits about 500 metres above Como at the top of the funicular, a hillside village of villas and lanes with views over the city, the lake and, on clear days, the Alps. Paths lead up from the funicular station to the San Maurizio district and the Faro Voltiano, a 29 metre lighthouse tower raised in 1927 for the centenary of Alessandro Volta's death, whose tricolour light can be seen across the lake at night. The tower itself is closed for maintenance in 2026, but the viewpoints around it remain open to walkers.

Location: Brunate, above Como

Access: Free to walk; the funicular ride is ticketed

Villa Olmo is the grandest of the neoclassical villas on Como's own shore, begun in 1782 for Marquis Innocenzo Odescalchi as a summer residence and completed to designs by the architect Simone Cantoni. It takes its name from an elm that stood on the estate when work began. The facade looks over a formal garden that runs down to the lake, the end point of the lakefront walk from Piazza Cavour, about 25 minutes away. The city of Como bought the estate in 1924 and now uses the villa for exhibitions and events.

Architect: Simone Cantoni · Style: Neoclassical

Location: Via Simone Cantoni 1, Como

Access: Free entry to the gardens; the villa's rooms open on set days and for exhibitions

The Tempio Voltiano honours Alessandro Volta, the Como-born physicist whose voltaic pile of 1800 was the first battery to produce a continuous electric current. Architect Federico Frigerio designed it as a small neoclassical temple with echoes of the Pantheon, paid for by the cotton industrialist Francesco Somaini, and it opened on the lakefront in 1928. The idea dated back to 1899, when a fire destroyed much of a Volta exhibition held in the city. The surviving collection fills it today: original instruments, letters and personal belongings.

Architect: Federico Frigerio · Style: Neoclassical

Location: Viale Guglielmo Marconi, Como

Access: Ticketed; closed on Mondays

Lake Como fills a deep Y-shaped basin carved by an ancient glacier: it is the third-largest lake in Italy and, at more than 400 metres, one of the deepest in Europe. Como sits at the foot of its south-western branch, and the public ferries and faster hydrofoils of the lake's navigation service leave from the piers on Piazza Cavour for Cernobbio, the Tremezzina shore and Bellagio, where the three branches meet. Seen from the water, the villas and gardens along the shore show the side they were built to present.

Location: Ferry piers, Piazza Cavour, Como

Access: Ticketed; timetables change with the season

The Basilica di San Fedele stands on the square that was Como's medieval corn market, a Romanesque church dating from around 1120 that replaced a 7th-century church of Sant'Eufemia. The relics of the martyr Saint Fidelis were brought here in 964, and for a time it was the city's main church. The facade was rebuilt in neo-Romanesque style in 1914 and the leaning bell tower was pulled down and replaced in the early 1900s, but the Lombard Romanesque choir and a portal carved with dragons, probably salvaged from Sant'Eufemia, are far older.

Location: Piazza San Fedele, Como

Access: Free outside services

Sant'Abbondio stands outside the old walls on the site of a 5th-century church built by Bishop Amantius for relics of Saints Peter and Paul, and it was the seat of Como's bishops until the early 11th century. Benedictine monks rebuilt it in Romanesque style between 1050 and 1095, when Pope Urban II consecrated it. Its twin bell towers rise midway along the nave, and the apse keeps a cycle of mid-14th-century frescoes. Restorations from 1863 rebuilt the north tower and marked the outline of the earlier church on the floor.

Location: Via Regina Teodolinda, Como

Access: Free outside services

Giuseppe Terragni's Casa del Fascio is a landmark of Italian modern architecture: a white block 33.2 metres square and exactly half as tall, built between 1933 and 1936 behind the apse of the Duomo. Its four facades are all different, balancing solid walls against open frames, and glass doors on the ground floor lead into the atrium. Built as the local Fascist Party headquarters, it has housed the Guardia di Finanza since 1957. Terragni's earlier Novocomum apartment block of 1929, on the lakefront by the stadium, makes a short walk through Como's rationalist architecture.

Architect: Giuseppe Terragni · Style: Rationalism

Location: Piazza del Popolo, Como

Access: Exterior only; the building houses offices, with occasional guided openings of the atrium