Unusual Lombardy: hidden villages and lesser-known places far from Milan

When people think of Lombardy, the Duomo, the crowded Navigli and Milan's shopping come to mind. But away from the shop windows, and often less than an hour from the city, there is a region made of Alpine valleys, pre-Alpine lakes and plains crossed by slow rivers. This guide to the unusual places of Lombardy gathers destinations where you arrive with no ticket queue: frescoes twelve hundred years old, hermitages clinging to the rock, prehistoric rock carvings and courtyards that not even the Milanese know. They can be fitted into a day trip or a weekend, and almost all of them are reachable by train or with a short stretch by car.

The Varese area

We start from the Varese area, where the hills hide one of the most important painting cycles of the European early Middle Ages: the frescoes of Santa Maria foris portas at Castelseprio, rediscovered only in 1944 under later layers and today part of the UNESCO site "The Longobards in Italy". The execution, probably by an Eastern hand, keeps a freshness that startles anyone who comes upon it in an almost empty country church. Still in the province of Varese, but on the Lake Maggiore side, the descent to the Hermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso is well worth it, a thirteenth-century monastery wedged into a sheer wall above the water: you get there by a stairway or a lift carved into the rock, and the view from the portico repays the effort.

Towards the Alps

To the east, in the province of Lecco, another climb rewards those who take it on: San Pietro al Monte above Civate is reached only on foot, with about an hour of trail, and is one of the highest expressions of Lombard Romanesque, with stuccoes and frescoes that few associate with this region. Further north, in the Valtellina and the Bergamo valleys, Lombardy turns decidedly Alpine: anyone in search of rock carvings will find, in the Naquane rock in the Val Camonica, an archaeological park — also UNESCO, the first Italian site inscribed in 1979 — with thousands of figures carved by the Camunni over the course of millennia: hunters, warriors, maps and symbols to be read in the open air.

Down on the plain, the province of Pavia offers a silent pause in the heart of the university city: the cloisters of the University of Pavia, with their magnolias and sixteenth-century porticoes, are a space open to the public where Spallanzani and Volta once studied. And right on the region's western edge, on the shores of the Ceresio, the Baptistery of Riva San Vitale guards a fifth-century baptismal font: technically it's in Canton Ticino, but it belongs to the same civilisation of the Lombard lakes and is reached in a few minutes from the border.

Corners of Milan

Milan, too, has surprising corners for those who know where to look. In the Navigli district, the Vicolo dei Lavandai preserves the covered wash-house where until the early twentieth century the city's laundry was washed, a scrap of wood and stone a stone's throw from the nightlife. A few blocks from the Duomo, the Cinque Vie and the Ca' de Sass tell of medieval Milan and its stone courtyards, while the Quadrilatero del Silenzio is a treasure chest of Art Nouveau and Art Deco palazzi around Via Mozart, perfect for an aimless walk. And behind Corso Magenta hide the vineyard that Ludovico il Moro gave to Leonardo and the church of San Maurizio, entirely frescoed by Bernardino Luini.

If you still have days to spare, the region offers much beyond these stops. Worth a detour is the workers' village of Crespi d'Adda, a nineteenth-century time capsule also on the UNESCO list; the ideal Renaissance city of Sabbioneta, in the Mantua area, with its star-shaped plan; Monte Isola on Lake Iseo, the largest lake island in southern Europe, which you can tour on foot or by bike; the postal village of Cornello dei Tasso in the Val Brembana; and the surreal ghost town of Consonno, above Lecco, the unfinished dream of a "Las Vegas of the Brianza".

Practical tips

The practical tip: for the mountain sites and the lakes aim for the fair season and for weekdays, while the city courtyards and frescoes can be enjoyed all year round and are at their best when mass tourism is elsewhere. Almost all these destinations ask only for a regional train and a bit of curiosity — unusual Lombardy begins just off the routes you already know.

Practical guides for Todi

• Where to stay in Todi
• What to see in Todi in 2 days
• Where to eat in Todi
• How to get to Todi