Lake Garda is not one destination but four or five, and the base you choose does more to shape your holiday than almost anything else you decide. Pick the wrong shore and you spend your mornings in the car; pick…
Supporting Guide
The Best Towns on Lake Garda
Lake Garda is really three lakes wearing one name, and choosing where to sleep is the single decision that shapes everything else about your trip. The southern shore, in Lombardy, is flat and sun-warmed, all vineyards and castles and the…
The Best Towns on Lake Maggiore
There is a particular kind of hesitation I feel every time the train from Milan pulls towards the water and Lake Maggiore begins to unfold on my right. It is not one lake so much as a long ribbon of…
How to Get to Lake Maggiore and Get Around by Boat
Arriving at Lake Maggiore is genuinely one of the easier journeys in the Italian lakes, and once you are here you can leave the car keys in your pocket for most of a trip. The lake sits close to Milan…
The Best Photo Spots on Lake Maggiore
Lake Maggiore holds a particular kind of light. It is the longest stretch of water I know where the drama of the Alps meets the softness of an Italian garden, and that contrast is exactly what makes it so photogenic….
The Best Time to Visit Lake Maggiore
Some questions announce themselves the moment you ask them, and “when should I go to Lake Maggiore?” is one. The honest answer is late April to early October, with the gardens quietly deciding the calendar for everyone else. This is…
Where to Eat on Lake Maggiore
A morning on Lake Maggiore has a rhythm, and much of it is decided at the table. The water here has fed the villages for centuries, and you can still taste that history in a plate of perch or a…
Where to Stay on Lake Maggiore
Choosing where to sleep on Lake Maggiore is really a question of what you want to wake up to. The lake stretches for some sixty-five kilometres between Piedmont and Ticino, and each town along its shore keeps its own particular…
The Perfect Lake Maggiore Itinerary
There is a particular light on Lake Maggiore in the hour after breakfast, when the mist lifts off the water and the Borromean Islands seem to float rather than sit on the surface. I have come back to this corner…
The Best Things to Do on Lake Maggiore
Lake Maggiore has a way of rearranging your priorities. You arrive with a list and a schedule, and within a day the lake has quietly persuaded you that the only sensible plan is to follow the ferries, chase the light…
The Borromean Islands: A Complete Guide
Some places hold their reputation lightly, and then there are the Borromean Islands, three small scraps of land in the Borromean Gulf that have been drawing travellers across the water for centuries and have never once disappointed me. I have…
The Best Day Trips from Amalfi
The best day trips from Amalfi are the ones you can begin without a plan and without a car, because the town hands you two departure points and asks nothing else of you. There is the harbour, where the ferries…
