A Scenic Route Through Northern Italy

Starting in Milan without overstaying

Milan works well as an arrival point precisely because it's a major international hub with good rail connections onward, and because two days is genuinely enough time for most travelers: the Duomo, the Last Supper if you booked tickets months in advance, and a wander through the Brera district covers the essentials without forcing you to manufacture reasons to stay longer.

Treat Milan as a gateway rather than a destination and the rest of the route opens up. It's also worth noting the trains north to Como run frequently and take under an hour, so there's little cost to keeping the Milan stop short.

Lake Como, and why Varenna beats the town of Como itself

Como the city is pleasant but heavily touristed, and most travelers who base themselves there end up taking a ferry somewhere else anyway. Varenna, on the eastern shore, does a version of the lake experience with narrower streets, a smaller crowd, and views across to Bellagio and Menaggio that are arguably the best on the lake.

Two nights is a comfortable amount of time: a ferry loop to Bellagio, a walk up to Castello di Vezio above Varenna for the view, and enough slack in the schedule to just sit by the water, which is really what the lake is for.

The long jump north to the Dolomites

Getting from Como to Bolzano isn't a straight shot. Most routes go back through Milan and up through Verona, adding a few hours to the day, which is worth planning around rather than being surprised by. Once you're in Bolzano, though, the character of the trip changes entirely.

Bolzano itself is a genuinely bilingual town, German and Italian both spoken and both on the street signs, with a market square and an archaeological museum that holds Otzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old mummy found in a nearby glacier. It also functions as the practical base for the mountains.

Days in the Dolomites

A car is genuinely useful here, more so than anywhere else on this route, since the best valleys (Val Gardena, Alpe di Siusi) are only loosely served by bus and the whole appeal of the region is stopping wherever a view demands it. Renting in Bolzano for three or four days and returning it there before continuing south is the least complicated approach.

Alpe di Siusi, Europe's largest high-altitude alpine meadow, is walkable in a day and doesn't require technical hiking experience, just decent shoes and an early start to beat the cable car queues. Further stops like Lago di Braies are worth the drive if the weather cooperates, though they get crowded fast once photographers discover a clear morning.

• Alpe di Siusi for an accessible full-day walk with constant views
• Val Gardena for smaller villages and cable car access into higher terrain
• Lago di Braies, best reached at first light
• Bolzano's Otzi museum on a rest day or rainy afternoon

Coming down to Verona

Trains connect Bolzano to Verona directly and reasonably quickly, dropping you from alpine air back into the flatter warmth of the Veneto within a couple of hours. Verona's Roman arena, still used for opera in summer, anchors a city that's compact enough to see well in two days without rushing.

The Piazza delle Erbe, built on the site of the old Roman forum, is where the city's daily life still happens, market stalls and cafe tables under buildings painted in fading frescoes. It's a good place to end a route that's covered a lot of ground, low-key rather than climactic, which after mountains is probably right.