LAKE COMO

The Lake of Como, with its 146 square kilometers of surface area, is the first for depth reaching 414 meters. Its origin goes back to the Ice Age. It has an inverted Y shape with the two branches that head south towards Lecco and south west towards Como, and has a perimeter 170 kilometers long. Thanks to a clement climate that favored the arboreal development, the Lake was inhabited since the proto-historic era. Then the Roman colonization took place, and it culminated with the establishment of Como as the area was especially important either for the defence of the lowland territories as well as a connection to the lands beyond the Alps. In the same period the reputation of the Lake began to spread, its shores and settlements began to rise. Among the early bards of the virtue of the Lake were the Latins, Cassiodoro, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger (natives of Como) and Strabone. Later on in time were added these voices, that of Paolo Diacono, of Leonardo and Benedetto Giovio. The international acclaim of the Lake arrived in any event between the 18th and the 19th Centuries, with first the triumph of the "villa civilization", and then with the development of the tourist élite. Lake Como as a result became the obligatory stop for travellers and writers visiting Italy: those who wrote about it among the others Bourget, De Musset, Longfellow, Stendhal and Flaubert. The most well-known passage are the celebrated opening lines to the "Promessi Sposi" "The Betrothed": That branch of lake of Como that turns at midday…", with which Manzoni immortalized the Lecchese versant.