How to Get Around Lake Como

The east shore is the railway shore. Trenord's Milan to Lecco to Sondrio to Tirano line runs along it, calling at Varenna-Esino-Perledo, Bellano, Dervio and Colico, about sixteen trains a day, roughly hourly. That is why Varenna is the town people without a car end up in: you step off a train from Milan 64 minutes after leaving Milano Centrale and walk down to a pier.

The catch is that the stations sit above the villages, and the walk down to the water at Varenna is the connection every centre-lake day depends on.

The west shore is the bus shore. ASF Autolinee's C110 runs Como to Argegno to Menaggio to Colico along the SS340 Regina, calling at Cernobbio, Moltrasio, Laglio, Brienno, Argegno, Colonno, Sala Comacina, Ossuccio, Lenno, Tremezzo, Cadenabbia and Menaggio before continuing to the upper lake. There is no railway anywhere on that shore.

The C130 works the third road, the one east of Como, calling at Blevio, Torno, Faggeto Lario, Pognana, Careno, Nesso, Pescaù and Lezzeno on its way to Bellagio.

The absence nobody warns about: there is no lakeside bus to Varenna. ASF's network stops at the Province of Como boundary, and on the Lecco side, Lecco Trasporti's lakeside line D120 runs only as far as Olcio, short of Varenna. Bellagio is reached from Lecco by the D110, which takes the far shore through Onno and Limonta.

So a Varenna to Bellagio journey has exactly one public answer, and it is the boat.

These are the four journeys that matter for this lake, priced from the current band table. The last column is the thing that decides which station you aim for.

The band table, and the routes with no published fare

The band table itself runs from $1.86 (€1.60) for 1 to 5 kilometres to $16.90 (€14.50) for 161 to 180 kilometres, with children aged 4 to 14 paying half and passengers over 65 paying 20 per cent less. Three journeys on this lake have no published route fare at all: Milano Centrale to Colico, Varenna to Lecco and Varenna to Colico. Trenord has no page for any of them, and the price appears only in the booking engine.

The honest answer for those is the band table plus the distance.

Two rules save money and trouble. Trenord rail tickets no longer require validation: a digital ticket bought online or in the app activates itself, and only reloadable chip cards still need tapping. Bicycles are free on Trenord inside Lombardy, one per traveller, on the trains marked in the timetable, which makes the east shore the cycling shore by default.

Buying on board is allowed only if you go promptly to the staff, and costs $5.24 (€4.50) on top of the fare unless the station had no open sales channel within 350 metres and no working machine. Travelling with no valid ticket is €47 within 5 days, €62 within 60 and €162 by injunction, plus the fare.

Start with the disagreement, because it will cost you time at a bus stop otherwise. Villa Carlotta's official page calls the west-shore line C110. The Greenway del Lago's official page calls the same line C10.

Both are official pages published by the bodies that run those attractions. The operator's own network list settles it: ASF renumbered its lines to three digits, and C110 is what appears on the timetables, the stop flags and the PDFs, while a two-digit C10 matches nothing on the ASF site. Use C110, and expect to see C10 printed on signage and leaflets around Tremezzina.

The same applies to the Como to Bellagio line, which is C130 and not C30.

The only fares ASF publishes against a named route are the Swipe on Lake contactless flat fares, in force from 1 September 2026. Tap a contactless card on the green validator and it charges these with no on-board surcharge. A red light means you have no ticket.

Kilometre bands, and the fares nobody publishes

Everything else is a kilometre band: singles from $1.98 (€1.70) in band 1 to $9.55 (€8.20) in band 12, on-board prices from $3.61 (€3.10) to $11.19 (€9.60), and ten-trip carnets from $18.06 (€15.50) to $86.20 (€74) sold online only. ASF publishes the band table and the timetables and never a list saying which band a named journey falls in, so unless your route is one of the Swipe on Lake five, the fare is genuinely unknowable until you buy it. Como's urban network is separate: $1.75 (€1.50) for 75 minutes on the Rete Urbana, $2.33 (€2) for 90 minutes on the wider Area Urbana, $4.19 (€3.60) and $5.83 (€5) for the respective day tickets.

Buying, ticket offices and fines

Three practical rules. Buying from the driver costs $1.63 (€1.40) extra on an extraurban line and $0.58 (€0.50) on an urban one, cash only with the exact amount, and can be refused in heavy traffic. There are exactly two staffed ticket offices on the entire network, at Como in Piazza Matteotti, Monday to Saturday 07:00 to 19:30, and at Menaggio, Monday to Saturday 06:00 to 20:00.

And the fines, in force from 1 January 2025, are €25 paid on the spot, €40 within 5 days, €75 within 60 days and €165 after that, with a €5 sanction for a valid pass you could not show, cancellable within 5 days at either office.

The Lecco side has a different operator

On the Lecco side the operator changes and so does the price list. Lecco Trasporti runs its own kilometre-class system with singles from €1.70 in band A to €4.50 in band H, and a Lecco urban single at €1.50 with a €3.30 day ticket. Its tariff sheet is still dated 1 September 2023, three years old at the time of writing, so treat those as indicative and check at the counter.

The journey takes seven minutes, with request stops at Como Alta and Carescione, from the lower station at Piazza Alcide De Gasperi 4. Departures are every 15 minutes from 06:00 to 07:00, every 12 minutes from 07:00 to 09:00 and every 15 minutes from 09:00 to midnight, with the two cars leaving Como and Brunate simultaneously. Tickets are not timed.

• Single $4.31 (€3.70), return $8.62 (€7.40), on the sheet in force since 1 September 2026.
• Youth to 12: single $2.91 (€2.50), return $5.83 (€5.00). Under 4 free.
• Multicorsa of ten singles $38.50 (€33.00); a seven-day pass $13.40 (€11.50).
• Bicycle, pet, pushchair or parcel $4.19 (€3.60); a single with a bicycle $8.51 (€7.30).
• Carer of a disabled passenger free; guide dogs free, other dogs muzzled.

Two things are not stated and both matter. No maintenance closure is published by ATM, by SPT Holding or by the Comune di Brunate: a single-track funicular does close periodically for overhaul, and no date for that exists in public. And the Comune di Brunate's own page contradicts itself, with a summary line saying the service runs Monday to Saturday while the body of the same page and the ATM sheet both say every day.

Take the operator: every day. The ride itself, and what is at the top, is on the Brunate funicular page.

What it does cover here is real: every Trenord regional train, every ASF and Lecco Trasporti bus, the Como to Brunate funicular, the Argegno to Pigra cable car and the Lecco-side funiculars. Bought on the app or the website it needs no validation at all. For a visitor doing a train from Milan, a bus along the west shore and a funicular in one day, it can genuinely beat buying four tickets.

What it does not cover is the boat. The only lake boats listed in the pass conditions are on Lake Iseo. Navigazione Lago di Como is not stated as covered either way, which means it must be treated as not covered, and on a lake where the boat is the main event that is a serious limitation.

It is also invalid on any journey to or from Malpensa Terminal 1 or Terminal 2, so it cannot be used for the airport leg. Price the boat separately using the ferry tickets page before deciding whether a pass is worth it.

No comune on this lake publishes a taxi tariff. The Comune di Como has no taxi tariff page, and none of the Milan airports publishes a fixed fare to Como. The only published airport taxi fare anywhere in this corridor belongs to Lugano, which prints CHF 40 to CHF 60 into Lugano city and quotes everything else on request.

Anyone quoting you a standard taxi price for a Lake Como transfer is quoting a private company, not an authority.

Water taxis are the same story with better numbers. Two operators publish tariffs and both publish them for tours rather than transfers. Taxi Boat Varenna lists a one-hour Classic Group Tour from €60, with its tour page stating €60 per person, and a two-and-a-half-hour central lake and Balbianello run from €90.

Taxi Boat Lake Como prices per boat: a wooden Venetian taxi for up to nine passengers at $349.60 (€300) for one hour, $582.60 (€500) for two and $1,747.80 (€1,500) for six, with a smaller open boat at $233 (€200) an hour. What nobody publishes is a point-to-point transfer price: Taxi Boat Varenna's own transfer page carries no figure and asks you to email for a tailored offer.

On ride-hailing, the honest position is that no transport authority on this lake publishes anything about it, in either direction. There is no comune, provincial or regional page regulating private hire on Lake Como outside Tremezzina's rules for its own berths. Plan on the boat, the bus and the train, and treat a car with a driver as something you arrange in advance rather than summon.

The Greenway del Lago runs along the west shore through the Tremezzina villages on a marked route away from the trunk road, and it is the one long walk on this lake that a visitor can do without a map and a nerve. It is covered on the Greenway page. Everything else on foot is short: a village to its pier, a station down to the water, a climb up to a castle.

Three places on the tourist map have no boat access at all and are worth knowing before you plan a day around them. Laglio has no landing stage, so the C110 bus on the shore road is the only public way in. Brunate has no pier, because it sits 700 metres above Como and is reached by the funicular.

Castello di Vezio is a climb up from Varenna on foot. None of those is a service that has been cut; none of them has ever had a boat.