The boat from Como’s Piazza Cavour pier ties up in Cernobbio beside a Liberty-style landing stage built in 1906, on the same square where Miralago Luxury Apartments opened on July 4 with eight lakefront residences and one-bedroom rates starting at €1,600 a night (US$1,800). The building spent decades as the Hotel Miralago, and its conversion into homes run by Villa d’Este La Collezione offers a more residential way to experience Lake Como, especially once the summer crowds thin and early fall settles over the southwestern shore.
Navigazione Laghi, the state operator that runs the public boat network on the lake, moves to an autumn timetable running through November 1, 2026, which means travelers can still get around by train and ferry well into the month. The town’s own calendar fills in the rest, with a garden festival at Villa Erba in the first days of October and a province-wide food program running through the 31st.
Moving Between Como And Cernobbio By Boat And On Foot
From Milan, the simplest route is a train to Como followed by the boat, which is worth riding at least once in each direction for the view of the villas from the water, though on a dry day one of the two legs belongs on foot. The walk from the park of Villa Olmo to Cernobbio takes about 40 minutes, much of it along the Chilometro della Conoscenza, a green corridor that strings together the old parks of Villa Olmo, Villa del Grumello, and Villa Sucota before a lakeside pedestrian and cycle path carries you into town with the eastern shore across the water.
The season’s first big weekend is underway on Villa Erba’s lawns, where Orticolario, the garden and design festival now in its 16th edition, runs from October 1 to 4 this year under the theme “En rêverie.” More than 250 exhibitors bring rare plants and artisan work into the park, and guided tours lead visitors through the villa that once served as Luchino Visconti’s summer home. Later in the month, the walk still carries you past the grounds before setting you down on the Riva, the lakefront promenade around Piazza Risorgimento.
A Town That Keeps Its Own Calendar
Wednesday mornings give the clearest picture of the town, when the weekly market sets up along Via Erba and toward the lake from around 8 AM and packs away in the early afternoon, with produce, cheese, and clothing stalls. Architects Nathalie and Virginie Droulers, who designed Miralago, described Cernobbio in the property’s launch materials as a town “shaped by its local markets, traditions and everyday rhythms,” and on Wednesdays the market stalls run onto Piazza Risorgimento, the square Miralago faces.
For an indoor afternoon, Museo Villa Bernasconi occupies an Art Nouveau house completed in 1906 for Davide Bernasconi, whose silk mills ran in Cernobbio until 1971. The town bought the villa in 1989 and turned it into what it calls a talking house. The rooms narrate the family’s story through recorded voices, documents, and drawers you open yourself. It opens Friday through Monday from 10 AM to 6 PM with full tickets at €10 ($11), and on October 3 and 4, as part of the Ville Aperte heritage weekends, guided tours run five times a day for €5 ($6).
Cooler weather also opens up the slopes behind town, where the hamlet of Rovenna, about 440 meters up, serves as the usual starting point for Monte Bisbino. The route to the 1,325-meter summit takes around three hours with roughly 885 meters of climbing and ends at a small sanctuary with views toward Monte Rosa on clear days. Walkers with more time will find the start of the Via dei Monti Lariani in Cernobbio too, a high route that follows the western shore all the way to Sorico, with mountain huts along it serving meals and beds. October highs hover around 19°C (66°F), and the forested hillsides begin to turn by the middle of the month.
Cernobbio faces east from the foot of the mountains, so the October sun drops behind the western ridges early in the evening and aperitivo on the Riva often happens in shade while the opposite shore still glows. Bring a layer and claim your table in the afternoon.
What to Eat While The Woods Are In Season
Restaurants across the province spend October cooking from the forest and the lake through Selvatica, the food program organized by Confcommercio Como. The program runs from October 1 to 31, with a record 53 participating kitchens building menus around game, lake fish, and mushrooms from the surrounding woods. Confcommercio Como president Giovanni Ciceri told CiaoComo that the idea has always started from what the wild territory provides, “the woods, the lake, the mushrooms.” Menus vary by restaurant, and the full list sits on the rassegna’s website.
If you make the climb to Rovenna, stay for dinner at Il Gatto Nero on Via Monte Santo, a terrace restaurant above the first basin of the lake that counts George Clooney among its high-profile visitors. The restaurant describes its cooking as Italian and Mediterranean with a particular focus on Lombard traditions, and its terrace looks directly across the lake.
Staying Longer At Miralago
The renovation at Piazza Risorgimento 1 turned the former Hotel Miralago into eight large residences. Miralago now holds four one-bedroom apartments of about 89 square meters and four two-bedroom apartments of about 100 square meters, two per floor across four floors, each with a fully equipped kitchen. The pairs on each floor connect into a 190-square-meter, three-bedroom residence for families or friends traveling together, priced from €3,700 a night ($4,160), while the two-bedrooms start at €2,100 ($2,360). Daily housekeeping and turndown are included, and a private chef is available on request.
Guests also get access to the Sporting Club and Beauty Center at Villa d’Este, a hotel since 1873 and a short walk up the shore, along with its gardens. The famous floating pool there keeps summer hours, and in October swimmers use the indoor pool at the Sporting Club, open daily from 7 AM to 8 PM. The Rusco, a restored vintage boat, carries guests across the water between Miralago, Villa d’Este, and Palazzo Venezia in Como.
Once a week, the lobby hosts an aperitivo for whoever happens to be staying. Miralago stays open year-round for short and medium-length stays as part of the group’s push to stretch Lake Como’s season beyond summer. The ground-floor Caffè Miralago serves residents and townspeople alike every day from breakfast until aperitivo, and the Wednesday market sits nearby. Boats on the autumn timetable run through Sunday, November 1.
