Every phone charger in the world carries a word that was born in this town, and Como barely mentions it. Alessandro Volta was born here on 18 February 1745 and died here on 5 March 1827; the volt, the unit of electric tension, is named after him. 2027 marks two hundred years since his death, gathered by the Fondazione Alessandro Volta under the programme 200VOLTeVOLTA. The anniversary, though, is the least interesting part. The interesting part is that Volta’s traces in Como can be walked in a single day, one after the other, with an 1894 funicular railway in the middle. Three works built in his memory — none of them by him — two down on the waterfront and one up on the ridge: a white octagonal tower that flashes in the colours of the Italian flag after dark.
This is that day, in the order that actually works: you start at lake level, climb mid-morning, eat at the top, and come back down for the evening.
Morning: the real instruments, inside the Tempio Voltiano
Start on Como’s lakefront promenade, in front of a rotunda of pale stone that looks like a Roman temple that took a wrong turn and ended up beside an alpine lake. This is the Tempio Voltiano, designed by the Como architect Federico Frigerio, built between 1925 and 1927 and opened to the public on 15 July 1928 — a century after the death of the man it honours.
There are no replicas inside. There are Volta’s original instruments, the objects his own hands worked with. This is where the day tilts, because standing in front of a piece of brass and darkened wood and realising that continuous electric current started there — from the stack of dissimilar metal discs separated by brine-soaked cloth that Volta assembled in 1800 — turns the abstract word “electricity” into a thing in a glass case, lit from above, about the length of your forearm. Everything that follows is an attempt to see how large the same idea was drawn after he was gone.
On the waterfront: The Life Electric, standing in the water
Walk on towards Piazza Cavour, lake on your left. At the far end of the Diga Foranea, the breakwater that closes the first basin of the lake, there is a blade of stainless steel as tall as a tree and as bright as cutlery. This is The Life Electric by Daniel Libeskind, unveiled on 2 October 2015: 29 tonnes of steel bent into two sine curves that lean away from one another.
They are not decoration. They are the initials of Alessandro Volta, and at the same time a drawing of the tension between the two poles of the battery: two curves that repel each other, and whatever passes in between. You reach it on foot along the breakwater with open water on both sides, and when you turn to walk back you get the view that gives the whole day its shape. Above the roofline of the city there is a mountain, and on that mountain, tiny and white, a tower. That is where lunch is.
Piazza De Gasperi: seven vertical minutes, since 1894
The lower station sits in Piazza De Gasperi, at the eastern end of the promenade. The Como-Brunate funicular was inaugurated on 11 November 1894 and has been doing the same job ever since: lifting people from the shore to the village above in seven minutes.
Seven minutes is nothing for a means of transport and an enormous amount for a change of world. You sit facing uphill — the carriage floor is stepped, like a grandstand — and through the rear glass the lake keeps widening: terracotta roofs first, then the cathedral dome, then the whole first basin, then the shorelines running north into the Como branch of the lake between the mountains. Meanwhile the air changes. You get in with the warm damp of the waterfront and step out into something drier and stiller — the particular quiet of steep villages with no through traffic, because nobody passes through: you arrive. Timetables and frequencies are all in our complete guide to the Como-Brunate funicular.
The air changes: the climb to San Maurizio
From the upper station to the lighthouse it is about 1.8 kilometres on foot, with 200 metres of ascent. The route follows the old mule track up to the hamlet of San Maurizio, and the climb is the part visitors underestimate beforehand and remember afterwards.
You walk between the garden walls of the Liberty villas built by Como and Milan families after 1894, when the funicular suddenly made a ridge reachable that had previously belonged to people with strong legs and religious reasons: wrought-iron gates, floral stonework, little turrets, wisteria that spills over the walls in April and lands on your shoulders. Every so often the road bends and the lake reappears for two seconds from a new angle, further below each time. The background noise reduces to three things: your own footsteps, wind in the trees, and a bell somewhere. More on this neighbourhood and its history in our piece on the Volta Lighthouse and San Maurizio.
The lighthouse terrace: 8 September 1927, and everything around it
Then the road levels out and the tower arrives all at once. The Faro Voltiano stands on top of Monte Tre Croci, at about 900 metres above sea level, in San Maurizio, in the municipality of Brunate. It was designed by the engineer Gabriele Giussani, it is an octagonal tower 29 metres tall, and it was inaugurated on 8 September 1927 — which makes 2027 its centenary, the same year as Volta’s bicentenary. Like the Tempio and like the sculpture on the breakwater, it is not his work: it is something built around him, a hundred years later, to say thank you.
The outdoor terrace at the base of the tower is always accessible and free of charge, and it is the highest 360-degree viewpoint in the area. Take the horizon clockwise and you will see why people climb: the Como branch of the lake narrowing between rock walls; the Orobie and Lepontine Alps stepping up behind one another as far as Monte Rosa; then the abrupt hinge where the mountains stop and the Po Valley begins, flat until it dissolves. On clear days, out in that flatness, there is a single gold point: the Madonnina on Milan Cathedral, roughly forty kilometres away. And once it is dark the lantern starts its rotation in white, red and green, visible up to 40 kilometres off — visible, that is, from half of Lombardy, which was exactly the point in 1927.
Lunch happens here, about 200 metres from the lighthouse
From that terrace to our table is about 200 metres. That is not a marketing line, it is the reason lunch sits in the middle of this day rather than at the end: you do not come down from the tower to eat, you cross the road.
And there is a better reason. According to the FAI, Alessandro Volta spent the first thirty months of his life in Brunate, in the care of a wet nurse. Before the battery, before the Tempio, before the tower and the sculpture: his first two and a half years of breathing happened up here — this air, this quiet, this light that comes in sideways at three in the afternoon. You eat where the man who gave his name to the unit of electric tension learned to walk.
The dining room at MamaGina Brunate opens onto a terrace with 180 degrees of lake, and the kitchen does a simple job properly: Spaghetti MamaGina, the Lasagna MamaGina that still mutters when it reaches the table, the Mega Tiramisù meant to be split in two and never quite enough. The right length of time to stay is a lunch that does not check the clock, because outside the view is doing the work on its own. If you still feel like walking after coffee, the other things worth doing in Brunate all start from here on foot.
Going back down
Time the descent for when the light turns. In autumn, the season this place is best at — we wrote about it in Lake Como in autumn — that happens between four and six, when the chestnut woods along the mule track go yellow and the lake shifts from blue to lead in twenty minutes. It is worth five minutes on a low wall before you walk back into the village: where to watch the sunset in Brunate is a question of ten metres, not kilometres.
Then the funicular again, seven minutes, in reverse — and in reverse it is better. Going down the lake does not widen, it comes at you. The lights of Como switch on in batches as you descend, the cathedral before the rest, and at the end the carriage slides back into the city like a hand into a glove. The evening descent has its own liturgy, described in the Brunate funicular at night.
Evening: Como lit up, and that light up there
And here the day finds its ending, which is not at the top: it is at the bottom. You come out of Piazza De Gasperi and walk into the centre with your legs pleasantly finished, inside the old town still held by its medieval walls: Piazza Duomo, where the cathedral holds Gothic and Renaissance together as though nobody had noticed; the Broletto beside it, striped in white, grey and red marble; then Via Vittorio Emanuele and the arcades; then Piazza Cavour, which opens onto black water at night with tables outside.
And if you stand in Piazza Cavour, turn round and look up at the mountain, above the village roofline there is a point of light going round: white, red, green. That is the lighthouse, and that is where you had lunch. This is why the day works in this order and not the other way: because it ends with you, down in the city, looking up at the place where you ate — while that place signals back. 2027 — Volta’s bicentenary, the lighthouse’s hundredth year — is the obvious year to do it. But the tower flashes every evening, including tonight.
The full-day route, hour by hour
One day on Volta’s trail: from the temple on the lake to the light on Monte Tre Croci. Tempio Voltiano 1 hour · lakefront and breakwater 1 hour 15 · funicular 7 minutes · climb to the lighthouse 1.8 km with 200 m of ascent · terrace 1 hour · about 200 metres from the lighthouse to the restaurant · total, 9.30 am to the evening descent: a full day. In winter, shift everything two hours earlier.
The Volta triptych works in a single day for one geographical reason: the three works are stacked on top of one another. You start at lake level, you cross onto the water, you finish 29 metres above the summit of Monte Tre Croci. In that order the day has a direction: the battery, the voltage, the light.
9.30 — Tempio Voltiano. Start in Como’s lakeside gardens, at the neoclassical rotunda by the architect Federico Frigerio, built between 1925 and 1927 and opened on 15 July 1928. Inside are Volta’s original instruments — not models, the actual objects. One hour is the right measure. It is the only one of the three works with a door and an opening time, so it goes first, while the day is still ahead of you.
10.45 — The Life Electric. From the Tempio you follow the lake towards Piazza Cavour, then walk out onto the Diga Foranea breakwater. At the far tip stands Daniel Libeskind’s work, unveiled on 2 October 2015: stainless steel, 29 tonnes, two opposing sine waves that read as Alessandro Volta’s initials and as the voltage generated between the two poles of his battery. Look at it from the lake side, with the city behind you: from there you can also see the mountain you will climb this afternoon, and understand how high it is.
12.00 — a break in town. An hour and a half in the centre breaks the day before the climb, and stops you boarding the funicular in a rush.
14.00 — the 1894 funicular. Seven minutes and you are in Brunate. The line opened on 11 November 1894 and it is the piece that holds the whole itinerary together: without it, the 200 metres of ascent between the Tempio and the lighthouse would be a hike in its own right.
14.15 — up to the Faro Voltiano. About 1.8 kilometres of tarmac road, 200 metres of ascent, at an easy pace. You arrive in the San Maurizio district, at the 29-metre octagonal tower by the engineer Gabriele Giussani, inaugurated on 8 September 1927 for the centenary of Volta’s death. The open terrace at its base is free to enter: the view turns a full 360 degrees and it is the highest in the area.
15.00 — an hour on the terrace. This is when the afternoon light starts to drop. West, Monte Rosa; south, the Po Valley and, if the air is clean, the Madonnina on Milan Cathedral; below, the Como branch of the lake with the ferries drawing their wakes. An hour is not too long: the view changes every twenty minutes.
16.30 — sunset aperitivo, about 200 metres from the lighthouse. You walk back towards the village and you are on our terrace, which holds the lake across 180 degrees. This is the hour when the sun goes behind the ridges and the water changes colour, blue to lead in about twenty minutes, while the golden light stays on Brunate’s walls a little longer. A Negroni and the terrace are enough.
19.30 — dinner. Spaghetti MamaGina, Lasagna MamaGina, and the Mega Tiramisù to close: the Italian cooking you want after a day like this, with the lake below now a black surface ringed with lights.
The descent, after dark. The last thing of the day is also the best: as you go down, behind you the Faro Voltiano is sending out its white, red and green beam, visible up to 40 kilometres away on a clear night. From Como’s lakefront, look up: that light marks the exact spot where you stood in the afternoon. That is where the triptych closes.
Frequently asked questions
How do you get from Como to the Volta Lighthouse?
From the station in Piazza De Gasperi, the Como-Brunate funicular, inaugurated on 11 November 1894, climbs in seven minutes. From the upper station to the lighthouse, on Monte Tre Croci in the hamlet of San Maurizio, it is about 1.8 kilometres with 200 metres of ascent.
How long does the full day actually take?
A full day. The Tempio Voltiano needs at least forty minutes, the waterfront walk out to The Life Electric about twenty, the funicular seven minutes each way, the climb to the lighthouse 1.8 kilometres with 200 metres of ascent, plus lunch and the evening in town.
What order should you do it in?
Bottom to top, then down again: the Tempio Voltiano, opened in 1928, and The Life Electric on the Diga Foranea; then the 1894 funicular; then the 1927 lighthouse and lunch in San Maurizio; and the closing walk through central Como after dark.
What is the difference between the three works dedicated to Volta?
None of the three is his own work; all were built in his memory. Federico Frigerio’s Tempio Voltiano (1925-27, opened 15 July 1928) holds his original instruments; Gabriele Giussani’s octagonal, 29-metre lighthouse dates from 8 September 1927; Daniel Libeskind’s The Life Electric, 29 tonnes, from 2 October 2015.