Lake Como is shaped like an inverted Y, and having that shape in mind is a decent way to wrap your head around this deceptively large place. We tried to work Clooney into the geographical visual, but the Y-shape takes it. Three long branches run between steep green walls — Como's to the southwest, Lecco's to the southeast, the open lake to the north — and at the point where they meet sits Bellagio, with the deepest water in Italy below and the Alps closing the view. Romans built the first holiday villas here; both Plinys were born in Como, and the Younger kept two houses on the shore he named Comedy and Tragedy. The habit never stopped. Two thousand years of villa-building later, the lake's terraced gardens, cypress avenues and ochre facades read as a single long argument about where to spend a summer.
The lake still runs on water. Ferries stitch the shore towns together better than the narrow lakefront roads ever will, gardens open from spring to autumn, and the silk city of Como anchors the southern end with a proper Duomo and a funicular up to Brunate. The visitor's real decision is the same one the Romans faced: which shore, and how close to the crowds. The centre lake takes the fame; the quieter branches keep the lake the locals know. Both are a boat ride apart.
