Free Walking Tour Como: Gate, Lakefront and Funicular

From a 12th-century tower gate past Volta's lakeside temple and the Gothic cathedral to the funicular for Brunate: nine stops, most of them free.

9 Stops 9.4 km ~2 h 32 min walking
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Route map for the Como walking tour
Stop 1 of 9
740 m·9 min
Porta Torre
Head south-west toward Basilica di Sant'Abbondio
Buongiorno, welcome to Como. I'm Alex, and this lakeside city gave electricity part of its everyday language.
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This Como Route at a Glance

Nine stops take you from Porta Torre, Como's medieval gate, out to the lakeshore at Villa Olmo and back through the old town to the Como-Brunate Funicular. The route covers 9.4 km with 2 h 32 min of pure walking; with the visits worth making, plan on about five and a half hours.

Seven stops are free, among them the Como Cathedral, where an optional ticket opens the upper areas. The Tempio Voltiano charges admission and the funicular is a paid ride. Map and GPS route in your browser are free; the AI Tour Guide is optional.

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This short shows highlights of the route. All 9 stops follow below.

The Route

Walking Map of Como from the Gate to the Funicular

9 stops 9.4 km 2 h 32 min walking
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The 9 stops along this route

  1. Porta Torre in Como, stop 1 on the self-guided walking tour
    1Porta Torre
  2. Basilica di Sant'Abbondio in Como, stop 2 on the self-guided walking tour
    2Basilica di Sant'Abbondio
  3. Villa Olmo in Como, stop 3 on the self-guided walking tour
    3Villa Olmo
  4. Passeggiata Lino Gelpi in Como, stop 4 on the self-guided walking tour
    4Passeggiata Lino Gelpi
  5. Tempio Voltiano in Como, stop 5 on the self-guided walking tour
    5Tempio Voltiano
  6. Broletto in Como, stop 6 on the self-guided walking tour
    6Broletto
  7. Como Cathedral, stop 7 on the self-guided walking tour
    7Como Cathedral
  8. Piazza del Popolo in Como, stop 8 on the self-guided walking tour
    8Piazza del Popolo
  9. Como-Brunate Funicular, stop 9 on the self-guided walking tour
    9Como-Brunate Funicular
  10. That's the full route.

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Como Walking Tour Stops, from Porta Torre to Brunate

  1. 1

    Porta Torre

    Porta Torre in Como, stop 1 on the self-guided walking tour

    Start with the big picture: a square stone tower 40 metres high, built in 1192 to guard the main entrance to Como. Look at the outer face first. It is massive and almost closed, pierced only by two entrance arches. Then walk through and turn around. On the town side a single, wider arch opens up, and above it four rows of paired arches lighten the wall. They match the four floors that once existed inside, all of them wooden and long since gone.

    The tower is the answer to a defeat. In 1127 Milan won its war against Como and tore down the town's old Roman walls. Como turned to Emperor Frederick I, called Barbarossa, and when he came to Italy for the first time in 1154 he agreed to let the city rebuild its defences. Stretches of those walls still run around the old town. In 1192 the city added three great towers on the southern side and put the most imposing one in the middle, squarely facing the road to Milan. It was a gate and a statement of independence at once.

    Why is the inner side so open? Probably on purpose: if enemies ever seized the tower, they would stand exposed to defenders attacking from inside the town. Later centuries kept adding to it, a small ravelin with guns and two pentagonal side towers in the 14th century, a semicircular bastion in the 16th. None of that survives, which is why the tower stands alone today, one of the better preserved Romanesque military buildings in Italy.

    Porta Torre is free and open at any hour; there is nothing to visit inside, so ten minutes of looking from both sides is enough. From here it is 740 metres, about 11 minutes, to the Basilica di Sant'Abbondio, a church whose story begins centuries before these walls.

    Hours
    Open 24/7
    Price
    Free
  2. 2

    Basilica di Sant'Abbondio

    Basilica di Sant'Abbondio in Como, stop 2 on the self-guided walking tour

    Two slender bell towers announce the Basilica di Sant'Abbondio. Unusually, they do not flank the façade but rise from the middle of the building, at the end of the outer aisles. The front itself is sober: one portal and seven windows, where a portico once stood. Walk round to the choir to see how richly its windows are framed, and look out for the Romanesque reliefs.

    This ground was sacred long before the present church. In the 5th century Amantius, third bishop of Como, built an early Christian church here for relics of Saints Peter and Paul that he had brought from Rome. Bishop Abundius was buried in it, and four centuries later, in the 9th century, the complex took his name. It served as the bishop's seat until 1007; six years later Bishop Alberic moved the seat inside the walls. The Benedictines took over, pulled down the old church and between 1050 and 1095 raised the Romanesque basilica you see now. Pope Urban II consecrated it in 1095.

    Not everything is as old as it looks. From 1863 Serafino Balestra, a teacher at Como's seminaries, removed 16th-century additions to bring back the Romanesque appearance. The northern bell tower had almost completely collapsed in 1784, and Balestra rebuilt it as a twin of the survivor, although nobody knew what it had looked like. His work also uncovered the foundations of the 5th-century church; marble slabs in the floor still trace them. The city of Como bought the basilica in 1974 and has cared for it since.

    Go inside: it is free. The draw is the cycle of mid-14th-century frescoes in the apse, and the relics of Abundius rest beneath the high altar. Twenty minutes is plenty. Then comes a long walk of 2380 metres, about 32 minutes, out to Villa Olmo and the lake.

    Hours
    Mon–Sun 08:00–18:30
    Price
    Free
  3. 3

    Villa Olmo

    Villa Olmo in Como, stop 3 on the self-guided walking tour

    Villa Olmo is a neoclassical summer residence on the western shore of the lake, regarded as the most important of the villas around Como. Its broad garden faces the water; much of the layout you walk through comes from a later owner, Marquis Raimondi. The name refers to a magnificent elm, olmo in Italian, already more than a hundred years old when building began. The tree no longer exists.

    The villa was commissioned in 1780 by Innocenzo Odescalchi, marquis of Fino Mornasco, from a side branch of the famous Odescalchi princes of Rome that had stayed in Como, the family's home town. The estate had come to the family in 1664 through an exchange arranged by Marco Plinio Odescalchi. Back then it held farm buildings set on the remains of a medieval convent, first of the Umiliati and later of the Minims, who turned it into a plague hospital during the epidemic of 1630.

    Work started in 1782 under Innocenzo Regazzoni from Ticino, but the man who finished it was Simone Cantoni, who led the project until 1796. Born in Muggio, Cantoni was a prominent name in the Milan of his day: he had built Palazzo Serbelloni in Milan and restored the Doge's Palace in Genoa. Since 1924 the villa has housed the Centro nazionale Volta, named after Como's own Alessandro Volta, whom you will meet again on the lakefront.

    Entry to the villa is free. If you enjoy grand interiors, go in; if you mainly came for the lake, the garden alone justifies the long walk out. Then follow the shore for 500 metres, about 7 minutes, to the Passeggiata Lino Gelpi.

    Hours
    Villa: Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00, Mon closed; Park: daily 07:00–23:00 (summer 5 Apr – 30 Sep), 07:00–19:00 (winter 1 Oct – 4 Apr)
    Price
    Free
  4. 4

    Passeggiata Lino Gelpi

    Passeggiata Lino Gelpi in Como, stop 4 on the self-guided walking tour

    Here the route hands itself over to the lake. The Passeggiata Lino Gelpi is a public promenade leading from Villa Olmo back towards the centre, with the water beside you the whole way. No gate, no ticket, no closing time.

    After three stops of stone and history, this is the stretch that shows why people come to Como at all, so slow down and let it work. Once you reach the Volta museum, the route turns back into the medieval core, which makes this your last unhurried stretch by the water.

    From the promenade it is 670 metres, about 9 minutes, to the Tempio Voltiano on the lakeshore.

    Hours
    Open 24/7
    Price
    Free
  5. 5

    Tempio Voltiano

    Tempio Voltiano in Como, stop 5 on the self-guided walking tour

    The domed building on the shore looks like a small Pantheon, and that is intentional: architect Federico Frigerio took the Roman temple as his model. A square base about 26 metres wide carries a circular hall under a high dome, nearly 26 metres tall in all. Corinthian columns frame the exterior, together with statues representing Science and Faith.

    It honours Alessandro Volta (1745 to 1827), the Como-born physicist who invented the first electric battery, the voltaic pile. He held his first professorship at Como's Royal School from 1774 to 1779 and came home to retire in 1819. The museum exists because of a disaster: in 1899 a fire destroyed a large exhibition marking the centenary of the pile, and many original instruments and documents were lost. As the centenary of Volta's death approached, the cotton industrialist and senator Francesco Somaini paid for a safe, permanent home as a gift to the city. Construction ran from 1925 to 1927, and the official opening followed on 15 July 1928.

    Inside are original scientific instruments Volta used, along with his personal belongings and honours. The building was damaged by flooding in the mid-20th century and restored afterwards; today it belongs to Como's civic museums. Admission is charged. Go in if the history of science draws you and allow 45 minutes; otherwise the building itself is the main event.

    From here the route leaves the lake: 840 metres, about 11 minutes, into the old town to the Broletto.

    Hours
    Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00, Mon closed
    Price
    6 EUR full, 4 EUR reduced
  6. 6

    Broletto

    Broletto in Como, stop 6 on the self-guided walking tour

    The arcaded building pressed right against the cathedral façade is the Broletto, the old town hall and Como's most important medieval civic building. The pairing is the point: church power and civic power stand shoulder to shoulder, a rare sight in a medieval European city. An inscription beneath the left window records that it was built in 1215 at the initiative of the podestà, the city's chief magistrate, Bonardo da Codazzo.

    Look down at the column bases. Como lies at the end of the lake with no outflow, so the ground was once marshy and often flooded. After the Broletto was built, the whole town level was raised by about a metre. That left the arcade sunk below the street, a hall used for markets and public trials, much like a Roman basilica. Later it was filled up to the new level and the bases vanished. Only in 1970 was the original floor dug out again, giving the columns back their old proportions.

    Compare the columns: the carved outer rows date from the 13th century, while the inner ones were replaced more plainly after a fire in the 15th century, and their higher bases mark the raised ground. The building was also once a bay longer. It had to be shortened when the Gothic cathedral went up, and the cut stones are visible in the northeast wall. Behind it hides a richly decorated church window, so lavish that someone may once have planned to demolish the Broletto altogether.

    The outside is free to explore at any hour. The cathedral is literally next door: 120 metres, about 2 minutes.

    Hours
    Exterior viewable 24/7; exhibition space open during temporary exhibitions and events
    Price
    Free
  7. 7

    Como Cathedral

    Como Cathedral, stop 7 on the self-guided walking tour

    Como Cathedral, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, was the last Gothic cathedral built in Lombardy, and it took its time. Work began in 1396, about ten years after the foundation stone of Milan's cathedral was laid, and ended only in 1774. Over those three and a half centuries many styles flowed in, yet late Gothic and early Renaissance still set the tone.

    The figures give you the scale: 87 metres long, a façade 45 metres high, naves 58 metres wide and a dome rising to 75 metres. That dome came last, built between 1731 and 1744 to plans by Filippo Juvara, architect to the King of Sardinia. Notice how the front lines up with the Broletto: the first two bays of the nave were shortened to make it fit.

    Before it stood an older cathedral, Santa Maria Maggiore, built in the 9th century near the lake. At the end of the 14th century the city chose a new building over restoration. Lorenzo degli Spazzi from Laino drew up the plans; from 1426 Pietro da Breggia shaped the work, followed from 1457 by Florio da Bontà, Amuzio da Lurago and Luchino Scarabota. The old church was largely taken down, though its south wall survives. The transept followed between 1487 and 1513, the main apse and sacristies between 1513 and 1519. In 1951 Pope Pius XII named it a minor basilica.

    Entering is free. Inside, look for Giambattista Pittoni's painting of St Joseph. A paid tourist ticket opens the choir, transept, sacristies and balconies, worth it if you want the building up close; otherwise the free nave is enough. Then walk 290 metres, about 4 minutes, to Piazza del Popolo.

    Local name
    Duomo di Como
    Hours
    Tourist visits: Mon–Fri 10:30–17:30; Sat 10:45–16:30; all Sundays and holy days closed; additional liturgical closures per 2026 calendar.
    Price
    Free general access; 6 EUR tourist ticket for transept, sacristies and balconies; authorized guide required for choir, sacristies and upper walkways.
  8. 8

    Piazza del Popolo

    Piazza del Popolo in Como, stop 8 on the self-guided walking tour

    Four minutes past the cathedral, the century changes. Piazza del Popolo is an open public square, free and accessible at any hour, and what matters here stands beside it: the Casa del Fascio. The name alone tells you which chapter of Italian history it belongs to, a short walk from the medieval core you have just explored.

    There is nothing to queue for, which makes it a good place to pause and take stock. The last leg is the longest of the day, 3810 metres or about 76 minutes on foot, to the Como-Brunate Funicular. Decide here whether the full finish belongs to today or to another visit.

    Hours
    Open 24/7
    Price
    Free
  9. 9

    Como-Brunate Funicular

    Como-Brunate Funicular, stop 9 on the self-guided walking tour

    The Como-Brunate Funicular has linked the city with the village of Brunate since 1894, used by visitors and locals alike. The line is 1,084 metres long; the lowest 130 metres run through a tunnel, and the rest opens up wide views over the lake and the city. Two intermediate stops are served on request.

    It began with a steam engine and switched to an electric motor in 1911. Refurbishments followed in 1934/35 and in 1951, when new cars arrived, and the region of Lombardy took over in 1981. After an overhaul costing 800,000 EUR the line reopened in mid-August 2011 with new air-conditioned cars built by Gangloff for 1 million EUR each: 12 metres long, 2.1 metres wide, room for 81 passengers. One is lilac, the other red.

    At the top, the station sits in the centre of Brunate. Across a small piazza is the machine room, where a public gallery lets you watch the haulage machinery.

    Take a return ticket unless you plan to come down another way. This is where the route ends.

    Local name
    Funicolare Como-Brunate
    Hours
    Daily 06:00–00:00
    Price
    3.60 EUR single, 7.20 EUR return
    Website
    atm.it ↗
Walking tour route map of Como Route loaded
Porta TorreBasilica di Sant'AbbondioVilla OlmoPasseggiata Lino Gelpi+5
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Press start wherever you are, even hundreds of kilometres from Como, and the guide begins telling its stories right away. In the city, pick any of the 9 stops to start from: it leads you there, then talks with you the whole route, asking, listening, remembering, and shaping the tour around your answers.

9stops 9.4km 2 h 32 minwalking 13languages
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Shorter Ways to Walk Como

Short on time or energy? Each of these cuts keeps a complete story, and you can start wherever suits you.

The whole town without the final leg

Stops: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

For anyone who wants the full city story but not the long last walk. Ending at Piazza del Popolo halves the walking to 1 h 16 min. Paid entries: the Tempio Voltiano and, if you want it, the cathedral's tourist ticket.

Lake and old town

Stops: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Start at Villa Olmo and you get the villa, the promenade, Volta's temple and the medieval centre with just 33 minutes of walking. A good half day. Paid entries: the Tempio Voltiano and the optional cathedral ticket.

Old town compact

Stops: 5, 6, 7, 8

Tempio Voltiano, Broletto, cathedral and Piazza del Popolo with 17 minutes of walking in total. With the museum and the cathedral interior, count on about two hours.

How Long Does This Como Tour Take on Foot?

Two legs account for most of the walking: the 32 minutes from Sant'Abbondio out to Villa Olmo and the 76 minutes from Piazza del Popolo to the funicular. Everything between Villa Olmo and the piazza comes in short hops of 2 to 11 minutes.

A realistic day: start at Porta Torre at 9:30, give Sant'Abbondio 20 minutes, Villa Olmo half an hour, the promenade a quarter of an hour, the Tempio Voltiano 45 minutes and the cathedral half an hour, and about ten minutes to each of the other stops. You reach the cathedral just before 13:00 and the funicular at around 14:50, 5 h 22 min after setting off and before the ride up.

The shorter variants work the same way: add the interiors you choose to their walking time. If you only look from outside, the day shrinks to little more than the walking plus a few photo pauses.

Before You Set Off in Como

  • Start and finish: Porta Torre is the recommended start, but you can join at any stop. The route ends at the Como-Brunate Funicular, and the GPS navigation in your browser can lead you from there back to the start if you wish.
  • Best day and time: Start in the morning, so there is time for the interiors along the way.
  • Costs: Seven stops are free. The Tempio Voltiano charges admission, the cathedral's tourist ticket costs extra, and the funicular is a paid ride.

Day Trips from Como into Lombardy and Switzerland

Out in the morning, back by night. Every route here fits in one full day.

Como to Milan day trip Milan in a day ~40 min by train Como to Bergamo day trip Bergamo in a day ~2h each way
Walking tour route map of Como
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Press start and a voice AI Tour Guide takes it from here: leading the route through Como, telling the stories, and turning your walk into a real back-and-forth conversation. No app or download is needed; it runs in your browser.

9stops 9.4km 2 h 32 minwalking 13languages
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What the AI Tour Guide Adds in Como

On a route that swings from Barbarossa's Como to Volta's lakefront and back into the Gothic cathedral, the AI Tour Guide ties the threads together as you walk: it greets you at Porta Torre, tells the stories, asks what interests you and leans into that, whether it is medieval rivalry with Milan or the history of science. It can take you further, for instance into how Volta's pile actually produced a current, and you can interrupt whenever you like. The GPS route stays free; for the guide you start with 100 free credits, then choose this tour all-inclusive for €19.99 with no time limit, or credits at €5 per hour.

A Real Conversation A voice AI Tour Guide greets you, leads the whole route, and tells the stories and facts as you walk, asking what you want to see and keeping a real conversation going. Not a recording you press play on.
Map Navigation Follow the route on the map and walk at your own pace. You choose where to start and when to move to the next stop.
Ask Anything Curious about a building you pass? Ask your AI Tour Guide on the spot and the conversation carries on.
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Common Questions about Walking Como

Which train station is closest to the end of the walk?

The funicular's lower station sits beside the lake quay, about 400 metres north of Como Lago station, which has Trenord trains to Milan. Como San Giovanni, on the main Zurich to Milan line, is about 1.4 kilometres away.

Can I go inside the Broletto?

Its exhibition space opens only during temporary exhibitions and events. The rest of the time you enjoy the building and its arcade from outside.

Is there a reduced ticket for the Tempio Voltiano?

Yes, there is a reduced ticket. Ask at the desk whether you qualify.

Is the park of Villa Olmo open when the villa is closed?

Yes. The park keeps its own, longer hours than the villa, so the garden is worth the walk even when the villa itself is closed.

Is the tour really free?

Yes. The whole tour is free: the route, the interactive map and the navigation cost you nothing. Only the voice AI Tour Guide is optional and paid: you test it with 100 free credits, then you pay either €5 per hour or €19.99 for this whole tour, with no time limit. Admission to 2 of the 9 stops is not included: Tempio Voltiano and Como Cathedral charge their own entry fees.

Do I need to download an app?

No. Everything runs in your phone browser. Open the route and start walking, no download and no sign-up required.

Do I need to book the walking tour in advance?

No booking needed. This self-guided tour is available anytime. Open the route in your browser and start walking. The AI Tour Guide works instantly, no app, no reservation required.

What languages is the AI Tour Guide available in?

The AI Tour Guide speaks 13 languages, so you take the tour in your own language and can switch at any time.

Can I skip stops or change the route?

Yes. Skip any stop, spend extra time at places you like, or start the route from any point. It is your walk, you set the pace.
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