Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
brief and ponderous commentary about the history of the fresco related by a woman on Mogadon whose
command of English pronunciation was not altogether up to the task ('Da fresk you see in fronna you iss
juan of da grettest works of art in da whole worl ...'), then looked around for any other ways to waste my
money and, finding none, stepped blinking out into the strong sunshine.
I strolled over to the nearby Museo Tecnica, where I paid another small fortune to walk through its empty
halls. I was curious to see it because I had read that it had working models of all Leonardo's inventions. It
did - small wooden ones - but they were surprisingly dull and, well, wooden, and for the rest the museum
was just full of old typewriters and oddments of machinery that meant nothing to me because the labels were
in Italian. And anyway, let's be frank, the Italians' technological contribution to humankind stopped with the
pizza oven.
I took a late-afternoon train to Como for no other reason than that it was nearby and on a lake and I
didn't wish to spend another night in a city. I remembered reading that Lake Como was where Mussolini
was found hiding out after Italy fell, and I figured it must have something going for it if it was the last refuge of
a desperate man.
It did. It was a lovely little city, clean and perfect, in a cupped hand of Alpine mountains at the southern
end of the narrow, thirty-mile-long lake of the same name. It is only a small place, but it boasts two
cathedrals, two railway stations (each with its own line to Milan), two grand villas, a fetching park, a lakeside
promenade overhung with poplars and generously adorned with green wooden benches, and a maze of
ancient pedestrian-only streets filled with little shops and secret squares. It was perfect, perfect.
I found a room in the Hotel Plinius in the heart of town, had two coffees at a caf← on the Piazza Roma
overlooking the lake, ate a splendid meal in a friendly restaurant on a back street and fell in love with Italy all
over again. Afterwards I spent a long, contented evening just walking, shuffling with hands in pockets along
the apparently endless lakeside promenade and lolling for long periods watching evening sneak in. I walked
as far as the Villa Geno, on a promontory at a bend in the lake, and strolled back round to the opposite bank
to the small lakeside park with its museum, built in the likeness of a temple, in commemoration of
Allesandro Volta, who lived in Como from 1745 to 1827, and there I lolled some more. I walked back to the
hotel through empty streets, browsing in shop windows, and thinking how very lucky the Italians are not to
have Boots and Dixons and Rumbelows filling their shopping streets with tat and glare, and retired to bed a
happy man.
In the morning I visited the two main churches. The Basilica of San Fidele, begun in 914, was much the
more ancient, but the domed cathedral, 500 years younger, was larger and more splendid - indeed, more
splendid than any provincial church I had seen since Aachen. It was dark and I had to stand for a minute to
adjust to the dimness for fear of walking into a pillar. Morning sunlight flowed through a lofty stained-glass
window, but was swallowed almost immediately by the gloom among the high arches. The church was not
only surprisingly large for its community, but richly endowed - it was full of subtle tapestries and ancient
paintings and some striking statuary, including a Christ figure that is said to weep. (They must show it a
Jimmy Tarbuck video beforehand.) I spent an hour sitting out of the way, gazing at the interior and watching
people lighting candles. Very restful. This done, I felt content to return to the station and climb aboard the
first train to Switzerland.
The train went north, through steep and agreeable countryside, but without the lake views I had been
hoping for. We left the country at Chiasso, at the southernmost tip of a pointed length of Switzerland that
plunges into Italy like a diver into water. Chiasso looked an unassuming border town, but it was the setting
of one of Europe's greatest bank frauds, when in 1979 five men at the small local branch of Credit Suisse
managed to syphon off the better part of $1 billion before anyone back at head office in Zurich noticed this
slight drain on the bank's liquidity.
Switzerland and Italy are threaded together like the fingers of clasped hands all along the southern Alps
and I spent much of the day passing from one to the other, as I headed for Brig. The train climbed sluggishly
through ever-higher altitudes to Lugano and thence Locarno.
At Locarno I had to change trains and had an hour to kill, so I went for a look around the town and a
sandwich. It was an immaculate, sunny place, with a lakeside walk even finer than Como's. They still spoke
Italian here, but you could tell you were in Switzerland just from the zebra crossings and the glossy red
 
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