Varenna

Former wedding capital on Lake Como

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Inexpensive flights to Milan, or rather to Milan airport in Bergamo, prompted us to explore the surroundings of Lake Como . We chose the town of Varenna as the base place for this trip, due to the presence of a railway station and a port for sailing on the lake. We got there from Bergamo by train. The trip began in an unusual way: in the timetable of the Bergamo station, our train number was crossed out in red. What happened was explained to us by the cashier we contacted. It turns out that the Italian railway workers are forbidden to go on strike all together, so as not to paralyze the work of transport in the country, but separately it is possible. And when employees of the Italian railroad want to go on a strike for some improvement in their work, they do it on separate trains. We were very "lucky" that day, as only one of all trains went on strike ;-)

Therefore, we had to linger a little and contemplate the dinosaur at the Bergamo station square, against the backdrop of a very boring three-story building where the local McDonalds is located.

But, as the same cashier explained to us, passengers from striking train are free to travel on any next train during the day. The nearest train was to Lecco, which is halfway between Bergamo and Varenna. There we got out and waited for the Leccio - Varenna train. The train came quickly, we asked two students what went with us earlier, if we would get to Varenna, they said yes, but better not get on this train, but wait 10 minutes and you will get there faster. We were surprised, but obeyed. Indeed, after 5 minutes another train came, which reached Varenna without stops in just 21 minutes, and the previous one on the same route traveled for more than an hour, stopping at each stop. For those who plan to travel in Italy by train, we leave a link to the railways website , where it is easy and simple to buy a train ticket, and sometimes there are significant discounts for travelers who book trips in advance (that is, people like us). If you decide to go to Varenna, then note that the station is called Varenna-Esino.

Varenna station is a small two-story building, in which the first floor is almost entirely occupied by a cafe, when we left, we came to the station early and took a table in it. It turned out that here is one of the centers of social communication in the town. All the tables were occupied, people talked to each other, spoke loudly, in Italian, drank coffee and wine ...

And the station platform looks like a small piece of plain between the mountains: an arriving train emerges from a mountain tunnel, and then disappears in the same tunnel ...

To get from the station to the center, you have to go down all the time, towards the lake. On the way to our apartments, we met a powerful, but sad lion and a bridge across the river, which reminded us of the most ancient bridge in the Venetian lagoon, located on the island of Torcello .

The sun peeking out hinted that it was time for us to take a romantic photo against the backdrop of Lake Como. The snow-capped peaks of the mountains seem to strongly attract people to them, since the fence where we took pictures was made very thoroughly ;-)

The discovery for us was the receipt of the keys to the apartment that we had booked. They sent us by mail a completely different address and an algorithm for obtaining keys. We found this house, where there were several mailboxes on the wall in an arch. Opening the box indicated in the letter, we saw a small box with a digital code, like in a storage room. Having typed the code from the letter, we opened this box, and in it were the keys along with the folded instruction number 2, which explained how to find an apartment and how to open it. We coped with all these quests, settling in apartments, from which a beautiful view of Lake Como opened up, and the approach on the camera even allowed us to see the town on the opposite bank.

We went to explore Varenna and the first place was the city square, where the ancient church of St. George stands against the background of unusual trees. This church is the main temple of the city of Varenna. The construction of this Catholic cathedral began in 1250 and was consecrated in 1313. Until November 2017, it was the most iconic wedding site on Lake Como. 90% of the newlyweds who got engaged here were foreigners. World stars like George Clooney or Giorgio Armani regularly attended the ceremonies as guests. However, everything broke down in 2017: the local priest Don Angelo Vigano forbade foreigners to get married in this temple. Travel agents and companies organizing VIP weddings are shocked. They write requests and appeals, but they get the same answer: "It is very difficult to realize that our tour operators do not want to understand that the Church of San Giorgio is not a place for a celebrity parade, but a temple."

This is such an unusual story about this more than 700-year-old church from northern Italy ...

This is how this temple looks inside. We went through an open door and photographed him for you.

The left nave of the church contained two paintings, which were surrounded by images of 15 saints. But in 1975, attackers stole St. Anthony and St. Lucia, which today are apparently kept in illegal private collections. After this incident, all the remaining Saints were placed under bulletproof glass, and today you can guess that San Antonio and Santa Lucia were there by the empty extreme places in the bottom row of this iconostasis.

The next interesting place in Varenna that we visited was Villa Monastero .

We got to this attraction in the evening. The villa was already closed, but this did not stop thrifty travelers and we went for a walk along the road that runs from above. The views of the villa and the lake are incredible.

Unfortunately, we did not see the inside of the villa and we can only appreciate the beauty of the interiors through the site of the Villa, but we could see the external beauty of this complex, which was founded as a nunnery in the twelfth century.

But Varenna is especially famous for its ancient castle Vezio, which was built in the 6th century by the Queen of the Lombards Theodelinda . Not much remained of the former grandeur of the castle, but the crenellated tower on the mountain beckoned us to itself, and we went to the cloudy heights.

On the way up, we were constantly pouring rain. Almost at the very top, a car stopped near us, the glass rolled down and a woman sitting inside asked us where we were going? We said we were going to Castel Vezio. She said that the castle is closed today because of the rain. We asked, who did this unfairly to tourists who want to see the ruins? She replied modestly: "I'm" - after that she closed the window in the car and rushed down the slope ;-) But there was no stopping us. We reached the entrance gate, photographed them, saddened that we would not be able to see the monument to the ghost and falconry, and the castle is famous for them. Having photographed on the ancient bridge at the entrance to the castle, we decided that for a change we would go down the wrong side from where we came from, but look for a descent on the other side of Castel Vezio. The first thing we came across was a bamboo grove.

Risking our own health, we went out onto the slope along narrow paths made of stones wet from rain and fog. where the olive trees grew. The surrounding views were simply stunning.

Standing on the side of the mountain, one could meditate, looking at the surrounding landscapes. And against the background of snow-capped peaks, only hard workers - boats rushed along the lake connecting the towns of Varenna, Bellagio and Menaggio.

Gradually, the path downward acquired an increasingly more civilized look, and at one of the levels we even met a cannon from the Second World War, aimed at Lake Como. Our assumptions suggested that we probably passed the local museum, but the building next to the cannon was closed and we continued downward. Going down, we noticed that the mountains from below look even, somehow more attractive than from above.

Varenna, descent from the mountain, cannon

After walking around Varenna, we realized that some of the streets of the town are no less vertical than the slopes that we had conquered earlier, and along one of these streets we went to the lake shore.

Varenna, the street leading to the shore

On the embankment, we photographed swans and all the same ships that float on the lake with the precision of a city tram.

Taking a photo of ourselves against the background of the ship and the main embankment, we wandered along the shores of the lake.

And these shores are either rocky or stone. It is not even clear how vacationers in the summer lie on such sharp pebbles, and even more so they enter the water along them.