Sports, Nature and Culture on Lake Como

If your ideal holiday is a mix of sport and culture, Lake Como is the perfect place where you can do your favourite sport while enjoying amazing landscapes, beautiful villas and stand-out pieces of architecture.

Windsurf and Kitesurf

For lovers of water sports, the lake offers many activities: the most windy coasts and therefore the best locations for Windsurfing and Kitesurfing can be found along the northern coast. The towns of Domaso, Gera Lario, Colico are excellent "spots" to take full advantage of the winds blow from the north, the Tivano, and from the south, the Breva.

Colico is also one of the most characteristic places of Lake Como, with its Piona Abbey, the Fort Fuentes, a military fortress built in the seventeenth century by the Spanish governor of Milan, and Fort Montecchio, a military fortress from the World War I that offers a truly unique and astonishing scenery.

Kayak

One of the sports that will let you discover the lake from a completely different perspective is kayaking. You can admire the beauty of eighteenth-century villas directly from the waters of the lake.

For the most experienced, the route starts from the central part of the lake, the one that goes from Bellagio towards the shore of Como, surrounding the Comacina Island, where you can appreciate a series of eighteenth-century villas. The most spectacular ones are Villa Balbianello, located in Lenno, - home of Guido Monzoni, mountaineer and explorer who led the first Italian expedition to climb Mount Everest – with a private collection of over 4.000 books dedicated to mountains -, Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo and Villa La Gaeta in Menaggio. If you move along the shore of Lecco, crossing the lake, you can admire Villa Monastero in Varenna.
Families and novices can enjoy a variety of expert-led and custom guided tours. We recommend the Bellagio Kayak Water Sports, which offers equipment and excursions of all kinds, from simple kayak hire to tours with aperitif and even highly suggestive night tours.

Bike routes

For bike lovers there are dozens of tours that are very attractive both for the natural and cultural/historical landscape they offer. In this regard, a very interesting route is the one that goes from Como to Lecco via Bellagio.
The tour begins in Como, a city where some of the obligatory stops are: the Cathedral, with its precious 16th and 17th century tapestries; the Voltiano temple, dedicated to the inventor of the electric battery, Alessandro Volta; and Villa Olmo, a magnificent example of neoclassical villa.
Bellagio is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating towns. With its aristocratic villas, including Villa Serbelloni and Villa Melzi, it will undoubtedly leave you breathless.
The tour ends in Lecco, where we recommend you to visit Villa Manzoni, a 17th-century neoclassical building that provides the setting for the Manzoni Museum, and starting point of a tour following in The Betrothed footsteps.




As we know that you, tireless and dynamic cyclists, besides being hungry for the desire to discover, will surely need to recover all the energy you lost during the tour, we want to recommend to check here a brief guide to some of the best restaurants in Lecco. Buon appetito!