Lombardy Region Guide

Lombardy rewards visitors who want more than one kind of trip in a single base. The practical case for it:

• Milan is a working city. Its design and fashion industries are real employers, not a heritage display, which makes the city feel different from Florence or Venice — less preserved, more current. The April furniture fair, known locally as the Salone, and the two Fashion Weeks are when that is most visible, and when beds are hardest to find.
  
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• Five UNESCO World Heritage sites, none of them obvious. The rock art of Valcamonica was Italy's first inscription, in 1979. Leonardo's Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie is listed with the church itself. Crespi d'Adda is a complete late-19th-century company town. Mantua and Sabbioneta are listed together as Renaissance planning. Several Sacri Monti are shared with Piedmont.
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• Lakes without a single character. Como is steep, deep and villa-lined; Iseo is smaller and quieter; Garda's Lombard shore is warmer and flatter than its Veneto side.
• Short distances. Bergamo is under an hour from Milan by train, Como about forty minutes, Mantua around two hours.
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What it is not: a region for people who want hill towns and silence. The plain is densely built and heavily farmed, and the industrial belt around Milan is part of the view.

The region divides cleanly into four trips, which can be combined or taken separately.

Milan and its immediate orbit

Two to three days covers the Duomo, the Last Supper (booked well ahead — tickets are timed and limited), the Brera district and the Navigli canals. Monza, with its royal villa and the Formula 1 circuit inside the park, is twenty minutes out by train.

The lakes

Como rewards using the ferries rather than the roads: the lakeside routes are narrow, slow and often jammed in summer. Bellagio, Varenna and Menaggio form the usual triangle. Iseo and the Franciacorta wine country behind it make a quieter alternative within the same distance of Milan.

The art cities of the plain

Bergamo splits into the walled Città Alta on its hill and the modern town below, linked by funicular. Mantua sits in a bend of the Mincio surrounded by three artificial lakes, with the Gonzaga palaces at its centre. Cremona still makes violins. Pavia holds the Certosa, a Carthusian monastery of exceptional decoration, a short ride outside the city.

The mountains

The Valtellina runs east from Lake Como towards the Stelvio, terraced with Nebbiolo vines on its south-facing slopes. It is a driving and walking region more than a sightseeing one, and it has its own cooking.

Lombardy's pressures are concentrated in a few places and seasons rather than spread across the region.

Lake Como in summer

Traffic on the lakeside roads is the clearest problem: they were built for far less than they now carry, and a delay at one point backs up the whole shore. Visitors travelling between towns by ferry rather than car avoid contributing to it, and generally arrive faster. Staying overnight on the lake rather than day-tripping from Milan spreads activity across more hours and supports the towns outside their lunchtime peak.

Air quality on the plain

The Po basin has some of the poorest air in Europe, a consequence of geography as much as emissions: the Alps and Apennines enclose it, and winter inversions trap what is produced. Milan's Area B and Area C schemes restrict which vehicles may enter, and they apply to visitors' hire cars as well as residents'. Arriving by train removes the question entirely.

Mountain seasons

Valtellina and the Orobie Alps are busiest in August and during the ski season. Late spring and September are quieter, and the terraced vineyards are worked in autumn, which is when the valley is most interesting to see.

Buying locally

Several of the region's foods are protected-origin products made in small quantities — Bitto cheese, Valtellina bresaola, Moscato di Scanzo. Buying them where they are made returns more to the producer than buying them in Milan.

Lombardy's three landscapes peak at different times, so the best month depends on which one you are going for.

• March-May. The plain is green and mild, the lakes open up from April, and the gardens at Villa Carlotta and Villa Melzi come into flower. Milan is busiest in the week of the April furniture fair — the Salone — when accommodation prices roughly double.
• June-August. Hot and humid on the plain, frequently above 32 °C, with thunderstorms building in the afternoons. The lakes and mountains are the sensible places to be. This is also the most crowded period on Como, and August is when many Milanese businesses close.
• September-October. The strongest all-round window. The heat breaks, the lakes stay warm, the Valtellina and Franciacorta harvests run, and Milan returns to work. Fog begins on the plain towards late October.
• November-February. Cold, grey and often foggy on the plain; genuinely good for the cities, where the museums are empty and the opera season at La Scala opens on 7 December, the feast of Sant'Ambrogio. Ski season in the Valtellina and at Livigno and Bormio.

Two fixed dates worth planning around: the Sant'Ambrogio holiday and its Oh Bej! Oh Bej! market in early December, and the Monza Italian Grand Prix in early September, which fills the area for a weekend.

Relative cost index vs region average