Greenway del Lago di Como

The trail page describes a pleasant six-mile hike and gives 10 km. The Useful Info technical box gives 11.2 km. Both are official. The technical box is the more specific document, and it is the one carrying the elevation figures, so 11.2 km is the number this page uses and the one to budget your legs against.

What the box states, in full: 11.2 kilometres, 3:30 hours, no technical difficulty, and a route that ends at its start point, which is the operator's way of saying that transport back exists rather than that you walk a physical loop. Ascent 221 metres, descent 257 metres, maximum altitude 276 metres, minimum 191 metres.

Read those two elevation figures together and the shape of the day appears: you climb slightly less than you drop, so the route trends downhill overall, and it does so in a series of small climbs in and out of each village rather than in one long ascent. Nothing on it exceeds 276 metres, which is under a hundred metres above the lake surface, so this is a shore walk with gradients rather than a mountain route. The serious walking on this shore is on the hiking page.

Colonno to Sala Comacina

The route begins at the south end of Colonno, where there is a bus stop and a car park, and climbs immediately: follow the Greenway del Lago signs up Via Cappella, then Via Civetta, into the historic centre. This first stage is the one that persuades people the route is worth doing, because within ten minutes of leaving the main road you are on stone lanes between houses with the lake dropping away below. Above Sala Comacina the route passes the chapel of San Rocco.

Sala Comacina to Ossuccio

The quietest stretch, and the one with the most Roman road under it: sections here run on the Strada Regina, the route that connected Como to the Alps and gave this shore its name. At Spurano the path passes the church of Santi Giacomo e Filippo, which is tenth to twelfth century. Offshore, opposite Ossuccio, sits Isola Comacina, the lake's only island, open May to the end of October and reachable only by boat.

Ossuccio and the climb towards the sanctuary

Here the route rises towards the Santuario della Beata Vergine del Soccorso, the Sacro Monte di Ossuccio, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2003. The chapel path up to it starts at the first chapel on Via Pasquale Castelli, and the network that runs it publishes no admission price and no opening hours for the chapel path itself. It does publish two things worth knowing: you cannot reach the sanctuary by car, and the sanctuary opens 17:00 to 19:00.

The access is described in its own material as difficult for disabled visitors.

Ossuccio to Lenno

The route drops back towards the water at Lenno, which is the natural lunch stop and the point where most people join or leave. Lenno's landing stage is on the scheduled passenger route with calls through the day. The promontory beyond it carries Villa del Balbianello, which is not boat-only whatever you have read: two land routes run from Lenno, one of about a kilometre and one longer trekking path.

Lenno to Mezzegra

A short inland stage through a village most visitors never enter, past the late-Gothic bell tower of Santa Maria Maddalena, which is the single most photographed piece of architecture on the route after the villas. Mezzegra has no landing stage of its own, which is exactly why it stays quiet.

Mezzegra to Tremezzo

The busiest stage, because it delivers you to Villa Carlotta and its terraced garden. Villa Carlotta's own page describes Villa del Balbianello as a half-hour walk along the Greenway from its gate, which is the best single indication of how close together this shore's two headline villas actually are. The Tremezzo landing stage is 450 metres on foot under the porticoes from the villa entrance, per the operator's own timetable note.

Tremezzo to Griante

The final stage, past the parish church of Santi Eufemia e Vincenzo and Villa del Balbiano, ending at Griante. Cadenabbia, in the same comune, is the only landing stage in Tremezzina that takes cars, and the operator's timetable notes it as 900 metres on foot along the lakefront from the Villa Carlotta entrance. From Cadenabbia the car ferry crosses to Bellagio, Varenna and Menaggio, which is how most walkers get somewhere else at the end of the day.

By bus, the ASF interurban service from Como San Giovanni reaches Colonno in 45 minutes. And here is the contradiction: the Greenway's own site names that line C10, while Villa Carlotta's official page names the line serving this shore C110. Both are official pages. ASF's own line index could not be read when the research for this guide was done, so neither is printed here as the corrected form: check the number on the stop flag at Como San Giovanni rather than trusting either website. The Greenway site quotes ASF fare bands rather than euro amounts, band 6 from Como to Colonno and band 2 from Cadenabbia to Colonno, and ASF's tariff pages render their tables in JavaScript and returned no figures at all when read.

By car, take the A9 from Como towards Chiasso and leave at the exit marked Lago di Como, which is the last exit in Italy before Switzerland, then follow Menaggio at the roundabout and join the SS340. From the upper lake or from Switzerland, follow the SS340 south towards Como. There is a car park at the south end of Colonno by the trailhead, and public car parks, bus stops and boat stops along the whole route, which is what makes a one-way walk practical.

By train, there is no railway station anywhere on the route. The two options the operator gives are the Milan to Sondrio line to Varenna, then the boat across to Lenno, or a train to Como and then the bus or the boat up the western shore.

By boat, Navigazione Lago di Como serves this shore with the slow battello, the hydrofoil and, in the centre-lake section only, the car ferry, which also carries foot passengers. Lenno, Tremezzo and Cadenabbia all have landing stages; Mezzegra and Griante do not.

• Bus: ASF from Como San Giovanni to Colonno in 45 minutes, line number given as C10 by one official site and C110 by another
• Car: A9, exit Lago di Como, then the SS340; car park at the south end of Colonno
• Train: no station on the route at all
• Boat: landing stages at Lenno, Tremezzo, Villa Carlotta, Campo, Isola Comacina and Cadenabbia
• Car ferry: Cadenabbia only, and it is the only one in the comune that takes vehicles

The decision is how many of the seven stages you walk and whether you go inside anything. The half most people want is the northern one, because that is where the villas are; the half nobody walks is the southern one, which is why it is the better half if you came for the walk itself.

Check the works page. The official site maintains a page reporting works in progress along the route and any active detours, and a stage that was walkable last season may be diverted this one. On a signposted route with no staff, that page is the only warning you will get.

Check the weather rather than the season. There are no gates and no opening hours: this is an open public route, and nothing published says it closes. In practice the surface is stone and the shaded stretches stay damp, so an autumn day after rain is slower than the 3:30 hours suggests.

What is not published: accessibility, and dogs. The Useful Info page carries an accessibility panel listing the categories for disabled visitors, older visitors, prams, road bikes, mountain bikes and walking animals, and the yes or no values behind those labels did not render at all when we read it. So the route publishes the questions and not the answers. Given stone steps and stretches of mule track, prams and wheelchairs should be assumed difficult until the operator says otherwise, and the accessibility page collects what the rest of the lake does and does not state.

• The works-in-progress page: the only published warning about detours
• No opening hours and no closed season: it is an open public route
• Accessibility: the categories are listed, the answers did not render
• Dogs: listed as a category, value not verified

- The official site publishes two different distances, 10 km on the trail page and 11.2 km in the technical box, and both are current [greenwaylagodicomo.com trail and useful-info pages, read in Q3 2026]. - You descend more than you climb. 221 metres up against 257 down walking south to north, which is the argument for starting at Colonno rather than at Griante [greenwaylagodicomo.com useful-info]. - Two official sites disagree about the bus line, C10 on the Greenway's own pages and C110 on Villa Carlotta's, and ASF's index could not be read to settle it [greenwaylagodicomo.com and villacarlotta.it]. - The UNESCO sanctuary above Ossuccio cannot be reached by car, and the network that runs it publishes no admission price for the chapel path at all [sacrimonti.org, Sacro Monte di Ossuccio]. - The route has no Wikidata item. We searched in Italian and English on 9 September 2026 and found nothing, which for a UNESCO-adjacent route on Europe's most photographed lake is genuinely odd [wikidata.org].

It is the best single day on the western shore for anyone who is not chasing a boat timetable. The version we would take: the early ASF bus from Como to Colonno, the climb up Via Cappella before the day warms, the quiet southern stages to Ossuccio, lunch at Lenno, Villa del Balbianello in the early afternoon, the last two stages to Tremezzo and the car ferry out of Cadenabbia. That is a full day, and it costs the bus, the villa and lunch.

If you have only half a day, walk Lenno to Griante and let the villas carry it. If you are staying on the eastern shore, the ferry across to Cadenabbia or Lenno makes the route a day trip rather than a base decision, and the ferry page sets out which crossing is which. Everything else on the lake worth a day is indexed on things to do, and the whole Lake Como guide starts from the homepage.