What is Lake Como? A body of water, historical location, geological formation, luxurious vacation destination, pandemic ghost lake? I put together the paragraphs below by curating sentences from articles published in academic journals, online magazines, and travel websites. Each piece of writing considers the lake from a different perspective; I’ve woven fragments together in an attempt to think about Lake Como as a space inhabited by many overlapping places at once.

Authors: Bellasi, A., Bettinetti, R., Boggio, E., Bollati, I., Castelletti, A., Castiglioni, S., Crochemore, L., di Giovanni, J., Di Guardo, A., Fattore, E., Galassi, S., Giuliani, M., Koenig, R., Kolbert, J., Manca, M., Mazzoni, M., Pechlivanidis, I., Pelfini, M., Piscia, R., Principi, P., Quadroni, S., Raad, D., Riva, F., Smiraglia, C., Terzaghi, E., Vora, S., Williams, I. K., Zuccato, E., and an anonymous Lonely Planet contributor.

In the foothills of the Alps in northern Italy, Lake Como deserves its reputation as a playground for the wealthy.¹ About an hour’s drive north of Milan, the region has an unbelievably picturesque setting that includes lush greenery and lakeside historic villages framed by the backdrop of the Italian and Swiss Alps.²

The current Lake Como basin shape is an inverted “Y” where the towns of Como and Lecco are located on the two southern tails.³ Virtually deserted during the winter, the wishbone-shaped lake awakens from its slumber in mid-March when glamorous crowds begin flocking to the pretty towns clustered around its midsection.¹ Masks are obligatory in shops and your temperature is taken at the entrance to supermarkets.⁴ Starting in the spring and through the fall, visitors can enjoy activities such as boating, paddle boarding, jet skiing (a Clooney favorite) and kayaking.² One has to carry the latest version of the self-certification form declaring the reason for your brief foray from home.⁴

Lake Como is primarily operated looking at two competing objectives, namely water supply and flood control in the city of Como.⁵ Lake Como and especially its southwestern bay, where the town of Como is located, is a peculiar case of water cycle contamination and reuse: it receives treated waters from Switzerland and Italy while deep water from the lake is captured, potabilized and distributed as drinking water.⁶

Lake Como is located in a heavily industrialized area.⁷ It was in the 1700s that Lombardy came under Austrian rule; this was the beginning of Como’s economic expansion and the domination of the silk industry.⁸ A public health risk may exist for the consumption of fish living in the southernmost part of the left branch of Lake Como due to PCB [poly-chlorinated-biphenyl] contamination.⁹ Information on zooplankton in Lake Como is quite scanty and fragmentary.⁷

Along the lake sides, from north to south, the change from metamorphic basement to the Permo-Mesozoic sedimentary cover of the Southern Alps is visible.³ Como’s mountain-backed shores are furrowed with ancient paths that wind through attractive villages where for the price of a cappuccino you can while away a sunny afternoon watching beautiful people in expensive clothes.¹⁰ The Romans arrived here in the second century B.C., and the cove near Bellagio, where the lake forks, was turned into an important military and trading point.⁸

But while all of the recent real-estate activity is ultimately good for the local economy, which is dependent to a large degree on tourism, the noble families who have lived here for generations are not necessarily thrilled with the changes.⁸ The carabinieri carry out regular road-blocks and have been authorized to use drones for surveillance.⁴

LAKE COMO, ITALY

1. Ingrid K. Williams, “36 Hours: Lake Como, Italy,” The New York Times, August 7, 2014, sec. Travel, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/travel/36-hours-lake-como-italy.html.
2. Shivani Vora, “The World’s Most Glamorous Lake Attracts Celebrities, New Hotels,” CNN Travel, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/things-to-do-lake-como-italy/index.html.
3. Irene Bollati, Manuela Pelfini, and Claudio Smiraglia, “Landscapes of Northern Lombardy: From the Glacial Scenery of Upper Valtellina to the Prealpine Lacustrine Environment of Lake Como,” in Landscapes and Landforms of Italy, ed. Mauro Soldati and Mauro Marchetti, World Geomorphological Landscapes (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 89–99, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26194-2_7.
4. Julia Kolbert, “Lockdown In Paradise: Lake Como,” Italics Magazine (blog), May 1, 2020, https://italicsmag.com/2020/05/01/lockdown-in-paradise-lake-como/.
5. Matteo Giuliani et al., “From Skill to Value: Isolating the Influence of End-User Behaviour on Seasonal Forecast Assessment,” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 2020, 1–20, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2019-659.
6. Sara Castiglioni et al., “Micropollutants in Lake Como Water in the Context of Circular Economy: A Snapshot of Water Cycle Contamination in a Changing Pollution Scenario,” Journal of Hazardous Materials 384, no. 121441 (2020): 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2019.121441.
7. Michela Mazzoni et al., “Trophic Transfer of Persistent Organic Pollutants through a Pelagic Food Web: The Case of Lake Como (Northern Italy),” Science of The Total Environment 640–641 (2018): 98–106, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.05.307.
8. Janine di Giovanni, “Crazy for Lake Como,” Vanity Fair, September 2007, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/09/george-clooney-lake-como-casino-royale-italy.
9. R. Bettinetti et al., “Recent DDT and PCB Contamination in the Sediment and Biota of the Como Bay (Lake Como, Italy),” Science of the Total Environment 542 (2016): 404–10, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.10.099.
10. “Lake Como Travel,” Lonely Planet, accessed May 10, 2020, https://www.lonelyplanet.com/italy/lombardy-and-the-lakes/lago-di-como.