The two-kilometre ribbon
The lake's longest flowered water walk.
Nemo bis — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Nemo bis — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Nemo bis — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Nemo bis — CC BY-SA 3.0
Villa Monastero at Varenna owns the lake's longest garden: two kilometres of flowered shore promenade running from the town to Fiumelatte — an old Cistercian monastery (hence the name) become villa, then house of science, its botanical ribbon a parade of continents: agave and cactus on the sun walls, cypress, cedar and lemon, and successive terraces each a picture frame on the Lecco arm and the facing mountains. The house is a furnished museum, its sumptuous rooms as the last owners left them, and its scientific lecture hall hosted Fermi — Varenna boasts that Nobel laureates have paced its garden. But the ribbon garden is the essence: out along the flowers, back along your thoughts. With the town's famous lovers' walk and Vezio castle above, Varenna completes — the golden lake triangle's loveliest stop.
The lake's longest flowered water walk.
Sun cactus, Mediterranean lemon, northern cedar in one line.
The science hall of great lectures — the garden their common room.
Viale Giovanni Polvani 4, 23829 Varenna
The golden four: ferry arrival, the rock-clinging lovers' walk, Monastero's full length, lunch in the genuine town, then the Vezio climb to the view castle — five satisfying hours, the sunset ferry home the lake's finest closing.
The milk river: Italy's shortest — two hundred metres of white froth bursting from the mountain each spring and vanishing in winter, a riddle that puzzled Leonardo himself into his notebooks. The garden's tip overlooks its mouth — a fit finale for the shore of wonders.
