11-Day Northern Italy Road Trip from Milan: Lake Como, the Dolomites & Lake Garda

Day 1: Milan, on Foot

A deliberately car-free first day: the rental waits until tomorrow morning, and a jet-lagged afternoon runs on the metro instead of a one-way system. One real stop — the cathedral and its roof — and an evening down by the canals.

Arriving late, or would rather start driving today? Collect the car at the airport instead and go straight to Varenna: it turns Day 2 into a full lake day and drops Milan from the trip altogether.

Tonight: Milan, within walking distance of the Duomo

1. Midday · Optional📍

   Arrive, and leave the car for tomorrow

   Whichever airport you land at, come into the city by train or bus — both Malpensa and Linate connect to the centre. Check in, drop the bags, and take the metro rather than a taxi: the M3 line runs Centrale to Duomo in about ten minutes. There is nothing to schedule today beyond the cathedral roof, and that is on purpose.

2. Afternoon📍

   Duomo di Milano and the roof terraces

   

   15 min from the previous stop

   Book a timed slot before you leave home, and make it mid-afternoon rather than late — the terraces stop admitting people well before the cathedral closes, and a slot that looks like early evening on the booking page isn't one. The interior is worth twenty minutes; the roof is the reason to come. Take the stairs rather than the lift if your legs are up to it — it costs less and puts you out among the flying buttresses rather than above them. Allow two hours for both, then leave through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II next door instead of doubling back; it points you toward the rest of the evening.

   Time here: 2 hr

3. Evening · Optional📍

   The Navigli canals in the evening

   20 min from the previous stop

   About twenty minutes south-west to Porta Genova — three stops on the M1 to Cadorna, then two on the M2 — and the Naviglio Grande is where Milan stops being a business city after dark. Walk the towpath outward from the Darsena basin and choose somewhere for the aperitivo hour by looking rather than researching; my rule here is that the places with tables out and a crowd standing around them are usually the ones to trust. Skip it entirely if the flight has flattened you; nothing later in the trip depends on it.

   Time here: 1 hr 30 min

Day 2: Collect the Car, Then Park It on Lake Como

The driving day that isn't. Roughly an hour and a half gets you from Milano Centrale to Varenna, and then the car goes into the hotel's space and stays there until the morning of Day 4. Varenna is the base rather than Bellagio or Como town for a specific reason: the ferry pier, the station and one of the lake's best gardens all sit within a few hundred metres of each other, so nothing here needs wheels.

Arriving on a Tuesday in spring or autumn? Villa Monastero's house museum is closed that day, but the garden stays open, and the garden is the reason to go — buy the garden-only ticket and you lose nothing. If you'd rather climb than stroll, walk up to Castello di Vezio instead: twenty minutes of steps above the village to a ruined tower looking straight down on the point where the lake forks.

Tonight: Varenna, Lake Como (two nights)

1. Morning📍

   Pick up the car at Milano Centrale

   Take the earliest slot you can book, and check the office's opening hours — they vary by company. Picking up here rather than at a downtown branch keeps you out of Area C on the way north to Lecco. Check the fuel policy and photograph the bodywork before you leave the bay; arguments at drop-off are usually about a scratch nobody wrote down.

   Time here: 45 min

   Compare car rental prices
2. Midday📍

   Drive up to Varenna and park for two days

   

   1 hr 20 min from the previous stop

   About an hour and twenty on the SS36 up the eastern side of Lake Lecco, more if Milan's ring roads are slow, and the last stretch is the good part — the road runs under the Grigna massif with the water directly below, and the lake opens out at Varenna. Parking should already be settled with your hotel: Varenna's own spaces are few and mostly resident-only, and the public lots above the village fill by mid-morning in summer. Once the car is in, you're done with it until Day 4.

   Time here: 1 hr

3. Afternoon📍

   Villa Monastero and its garden terraces

   10 min from the previous stop

   Ten minutes on foot from the centre along the lakeside path. The house museum is a furnished nineteenth-century interior and pleasant enough, but the reason to come is the botanical garden strung out along the water for the best part of two kilometres — cypress, agave, citrus and a run of statues and follies, with the lake a couple of metres below you the whole way. The garden-only ticket is enough if interiors don't appeal. Give it an hour and a half and take the far end slowly; the path stays level the whole way, and the second half is the quieter half — don't turn back at the first pavilion.

   Time here: 1 hr 45 min

4. Evening · Optional📍

   Passeggiata degli Innamorati at dusk

   10 min from the previous stop

   The walkway pinned to the rock between the ferry pier and the old village, a short walk from anywhere in Varenna. It takes ten minutes to walk and most people do it twice. Come back up into the village afterward — the stepped lanes behind the waterfront are where Varenna keeps its restaurants, and nothing is more than a few minutes from anything else.

   Time here: 1 hr

Day 3: Lake Como by Boat

No driving at all today, and the one day on the route that runs on someone else's timetable. The plan is Bellagio in the morning and Villa Carlotta in the afternoon, a short ferry hop apart, then the boat home to Varenna — a complete day on its own. Villa del Balbianello is an optional extension for when the sailings line up, not part of the core plan. Build the sequence from the ferry timetable for your exact date before you set off. This is the day that justifies basing on the eastern shore.

Bellagio and Villa Carlotta are the day; Balbianello is the extra, added only if it is open on your date, you have booked, and the boats line up. If Balbianello matters more to you than Carlotta, swap them rather than trying to fit both into a tight timetable.

Tonight: Varenna, Lake Como

1. Morning📍

   Ferry across to Bellagio

   

   Take an early boat; it is a short crossing and the early sailings are usually the quietest. Bellagio earns its reputation in the stepped lanes climbing from the waterfront — Salita Serbelloni and its neighbours — which take about an hour to wander properly. Then walk north to Punta Spartivento, ten to fifteen minutes to the tip of the promontory where the lake splits into its two southern arms, with a small bar, a bench, and a view straight up both branches. Be back at the pier by late morning.

   Time here: 3 hr

2. Afternoon📍

   Villa Carlotta at Tremezzo

   30 min from the previous stop

   Another short hop west to Cadenabbia or Tremezzo, and the villa gate is a few minutes' walk from either landing. Villa Carlotta is a seventeenth-century house holding a nineteenth-century art collection, with around eight hectares of terraced garden climbing behind it — rhododendrons and azaleas if you catch late spring, tree ferns and bamboo at any time. Allow two hours for the garden and a walk through the house. From here the boat back to Varenna finishes the day.

   Time here: 2 hr

3. Evening · Optional📍

   Optional: Villa del Balbianello, if the boats line up

   30 min from the previous stop

   An extension, not part of the plan. It is the best thing on the western shore and also the stop most easily wrecked by a timetable, so before you commit, check two things: the sailings on to Lenno, and — the one that actually catches people — the last boat back to Varenna. If either doesn't work, skip it; Bellagio and Carlotta have already made a full day. If they do: one more stop south at Lenno, then either a taxi boat around the headland or a level walk of about twenty minutes through the woods from Lenno's waterfront. Balbianello is the one on the promontory, with the loggia between two stretches of water that turns up in half the photographs ever taken here. Its opening days change through the season, and both the gardens and the guided interior tours have to be booked for a specific date in advance.

   Time here: 2 hr

Day 4: East to the Dolomites, With Bergamo on the Way

One of the trip's two long driving days — around four hours behind the wheel in total — and worth planning around rather than resenting. Bergamo's walled upper town sits close enough to the natural route that the stop costs little extra driving, and it breaks the day neatly in two. Leave Varenna early, give Bergamo the late morning, then let the motorway do most of the work: the A4 and the A22 Brennero north through Verona and Trento to Bolzano, with a slower, scenic climb into Val Gardena at the end.

If the drive worries you, the fix is an earlier start rather than cutting Bergamo — the time goes on the stop, not the detour. What you can cut is the tail: Bolzano makes a decent overnight if you'd rather split the day, at the cost of an evening in the mountains. The A4 and A22 around the Verona junction can back up badly on summer weekends, so a weekday is generally the better day for this drive if your dates allow it.

Tonight: Ortisei, Val Gardena (four nights)

1. Morning📍

   Bergamo Città Alta

   

   Around an hour and ten from Varenna. Park in the lower town and take the funicular up rather than driving in — the upper town is a limited-traffic zone, and the funicular is the nicer way to arrive anyway. Two hours is enough: Piazza Vecchia with the Palazzo della Ragione and the Contarini fountain, the Colleoni Chapel's extravagantly carved facade next door, and a walk along a stretch of the sixteenth-century Venetian walls that ring the whole town. If you do one thing, sit in Piazza Vecchia for twenty minutes rather than crossing it — every side of the square is a different century and none of them argue.

   Time here: 2 hr 30 min

2. Evening📍

   The drive to Ortisei

   3 hr 5 min from the previous stop

   Roughly three hours from Bergamo, almost all of it motorway: the A4 east past Brescia and Verona, then the A22 Brennero north up the Adige valley through Trento and Bolzano. The scenery starts earning its keep from Trento onward, with terraced vineyards and the first real rock walls closing in. Leave the motorway at Chiusa or Bolzano Nord and climb into Val Gardena — the last half hour or so is steep hairpins out of the Isarco valley, slower than the satnav suggests behind summer traffic, and Ortisei appears in a bowl of meadow with the Odle ridge standing behind it. Four nights here, which means unpacking once.

Day 5: Alpe di Siusi, the Slow Way Up

A vast rolling meadow at around two thousand metres sits directly above Ortisei, and the gondola from the middle of the village goes straight up to it — which neatly sidesteps a road that is closed to visitors' cars for most of the day and car parks that now have to be booked. This is the easy day of the three: one lift, a long flat walk at altitude, and an afternoon back in the village.

Low cloud on the plateau? The gondola runs anyway, but there is nothing to see up there, and this is the day to swap out. Drive the forty minutes down to Bolzano instead for the archaeological museum and Ötzi the Iceman, and move Alpe di Siusi to whichever of the next two days looks clearest — that flexibility is exactly why this base gets four nights.

Tonight: Ortisei, Val Gardena

1. Morning📍

   Ride the gondola up to Mont Sëuc

   

   The valley station is in the middle of Ortisei, walkable from most of the village, and it runs from 08:30. Going early matters more for light and space than for queues. The ride takes a few minutes and puts you out at Mont Sëuc on the northern edge of the plateau. Take twenty minutes at the top station before walking anywhere — the Sassolungo and the Sciliar are both in front of you, and the shape of the day makes more sense once you've looked at them properly.

   Time here: 1 hr

2. Midday📍

   Walk the plateau toward Compatsch

   1 hr 30 min from the previous stop

   Three or four hours of very easy walking on gravel farm tracks, almost all of it level, past wooden hay barns and grazing cattle with the rock wall of the Sciliar on one side. The classic line runs from Mont Sëuc across to Compatsch and, if the legs are willing, on down toward Saltria. The way home is back the same way to the Mont Sëuc gondola — the plateau bus only runs between Compatsch and Saltria — so turn round with enough left in your legs for the return. Bring water and something for lunch, or plan on one of the rifugi — they're farm huts serving plates of dumplings rather than restaurants, which is the point. The main tracks are signed and well used, so a map is a backup rather than a necessity.

   Time here: 1 hr 20 min

3. Evening · Optional📍

   Ortisei in the late afternoon

   1 hr 40 min from the previous stop

   Back down by gondola, and the village deserves an hour on foot rather than a glance on the way to dinner. The main street is pedestrianised, the wood-carving workshops the valley has traded on for generations still have windows worth stopping at, and the Luis Trenker promenade loops out above the rooftops for a view back across the valley. Val Gardena speaks Ladin before Italian or German — you'll see all three on the street signs, in that order.

   Time here: 1 hr 30 min

Day 6: Seceda's Ridge, and Val di Funes If You Want It

Two views of the same mountains from opposite sides, and the day is built around getting the first one early. Seceda's tilted grass ridge falls away into the Odle spires, and it is what most people ride this cable car for — the top station has a crowd on it from late morning onward, which is exactly why an early ascent matters. The afternoon goes over the shoulder into Val di Funes for the view from below — the same peaks, a green valley floor, and two very small churches.

Three big views in one day is the most this itinerary asks of anybody, and the alternative is not a consolation prize — it may be the better day. Skip Val di Funes, stay on the ridge, and walk from Seceda out toward the Pieralongia rocks and back down to the mid-station: two to three hours on easy ground, and the only stretch of the trip where you are among the Odle rather than looking at them. Take the Funes half instead when the weather is mixed — a valley floor is worth seeing under cloud and a ridge isn't.

Tonight: Ortisei, Val Gardena

1. Morning📍

   Seceda by cable car from Ortisei

   

   Two stages from the village — a small gondola up to Furnes, then a larger cabin to the ridge at around 2,500 metres. It is comfortably the most expensive lift on this trip, and the one most worth paying for. Aim for the morning: Dolomite cloud more often builds through the day than burns off. At the top, walk ten minutes north away from the station and the ridge does the rest. Budget three hours up here; it won't feel like too much.

   Time here: 3 hr

2. Afternoon · Optional📍

   Over to Santa Maddalena in Val di Funes

   

   1 hr from the previous stop

   Down by cable car, then about forty-five minutes by road around the shoulder of the Odle into the next valley — call it an hour door to door. Something changed here in 2026 and it matters: a barrier now keeps non-resident cars off the road up to Santa Maddalena's church from May to November, so you park lower down and walk — plan on twenty to thirty minutes uphill, more if the valley lot is full and you're sent further down. To my mind it's a better arrival than the car park ever was. The view is the church on its knoll with the whole Odle ridge behind it — the same rock you stood on this morning, seen from underneath.

   Time here: 2 hr 30 min

3. Evening · Optional📍

   San Giovanni in Ranui

   10 min from the previous stop

   Ten minutes further up the valley: a small baroque chapel standing alone in a meadow, photographed from a marked viewing point beside the farm that owns it, for a small fee. It takes fifteen minutes and there's nothing to go inside for. Worth it if you like the picture, entirely skippable if you've had enough mountains for one day, and no real loss either way.

   Time here: 45 min

Day 7: Four Passes Around the Sella

The drive the Dolomites are famous for, and a genuine full day rather than a morning: the Sella Ronda is only about fifty-five kilometres, but it's two and a half hours of hairpins before you stop anywhere, and you will want to stop constantly. Going clockwise from Ortisei — Gardena, Campolongo, Pordoi, Sella — keeps the Sella massif on your right the whole way and puts the cable car at Pordoi in the middle of the day.

Rain or low cloud makes this day pointless: there's nothing to see and the hairpins get greasy. Swap it with Day 5 or 6. If it closes in once you're already out, the turn-back point is Passo Gardena — much closer to home from there than finishing the circuit. From Pordoi onward that flips, and completing the loop is the shorter way back. If you want more of the same afterward, Passo Fedaia and the Marmolada hang off the Pordoi end of the loop — but that road is open May to October only. Check the date as well as the sky: on the two Sellaronda Bike Days, one in June and one in September, all four passes close to cars for most of the day and belong to cyclists.

Tonight: Ortisei, Val Gardena

1. Morning📍

   Passo Gardena

   

   Forty minutes up the valley from Ortisei, on a road climbing steadily past Santa Cristina and Selva. The pass is a broad saddle above two thousand metres with the Sella's wall on one side and the Cir peaks on the other, plus a car park and a couple of huts. Give it an hour, including the short walk out to the viewpoint above the road — the Alta Badia valley drops away eastward in a way the pass itself hides from the car.

   Time here: 1 hr 15 min

2. Midday📍

   Passo Campolongo and Passo Pordoi

   1 hr from the previous stop

   An hour of driving covers both, dropping through Corvara and Arabba in between, and the second half is the more dramatic — a long stack of numbered hairpins climbing to Pordoi at 2,239 metres. At the top, take the cableway: three minutes puts you on the Sass Pordoi terrace at 2,950 metres, looking across a high stone desert to the Marmolada. Allow three hours here with the ride, the terrace and lunch at the pass.

   Time here: 3 hr

3. Afternoon📍

   Passo Sella and back down

   25 min from the previous stop

   Twenty-five minutes on from Pordoi, and arguably the pick of the four: the road runs directly under the Sassolungo's south face with the Sella cliffs behind you, and there's a broad pull-in where everyone stops for the same photograph and it's still worth taking. An hour here, then the last half hour drops back into Val Gardena past Selva and into Ortisei. If the light is good, this is the pass to linger at rather than the one to hurry past.

   Time here: 1 hr 15 min

Day 8: Down the Dolomites Road to Lake Garda

A transfer day that earns its three and a half hours behind the wheel. Rather than heading straight down the motorway, the route takes the western end of the Great Dolomites Road over Passo Costalunga to Lago di Carezza, then drops through Bolzano and Trento to arrive at Lake Garda from the top, so your first sight of it is the cliff-walled northern end rather than the flat southern shore. The last half hour, the cliff road south from Riva to Malcesine, is the day's reward.

In a hurry, or driving in bad weather? Skipping Carezza and going straight down the A22 from Bolzano saves about an hour and costs you one lake and one pass — a fair trade on a grim day, a poor one otherwise. Either way, don't swap Riva and the eastern shore road for the motorway to Affi: the motorway is a little quicker and misses the entire point of arriving at Garda.

Tonight: Malcesine, Lake Garda (two nights)

1. Morning📍

   Passo Costalunga and Lago di Carezza

   

   About an hour from Ortisei, dropping toward Bolzano's outskirts and then up the Val d'Ega to Costalunga. Lago di Carezza is a small green lake right beside the road with the Latemar range reflected in it, and it works exactly as advertised in the first half of the day, before the wind picks up and breaks the surface. There's a paid car park with a tunnel under the road; the loop around the water takes twenty minutes, and the viewing platform at the northern end is where the reflection lines up. An hour is plenty. Costalunga stays open year-round, unlike some of its neighbours.

   Time here: 1 hr 15 min

2. Afternoon📍

   Down to Riva del Garda

   

   2 hr from the previous stop

   A long descent — about two hours, most of it on the A22 south from Bolzano through Trento, then west at Rovereto. Riva sits at the head of the lake with fifteen-hundred-metre cliffs standing directly over it, which is not what most people expect from Lake Garda. Park once and walk: the old town around Piazza III Novembre, the Torre Apponale, and the waterfront out to the foot of the Ponale road, now a walking and cycling route cut into the cliff face and worth twenty minutes even if you don't go far along it. Ninety minutes here.

   Time here: 1 hr 30 min

3. Evening📍

   The eastern shore road to Malcesine

   25 min from the previous stop

   Twenty-five minutes south on the SS249, the Gardesana Orientale, and it's one of the better short drives in Italy — a ledge blasted along the base of Monte Baldo, a run of rock tunnels, and the lake flat below you the whole way. Malcesine is a knot of stone lanes under a Scaligeri castle on a rock spur, with a small harbour at the bottom of it. Arrive, park where the hotel tells you (the centre is closed to traffic), and spend the evening walking down to the harbour and back up. Two nights here.

   Time here: 2 hr

Day 9: A Lake Day, On Purpose

The one deliberately light day of the trip, and it comes after five days of mountains and two long drives because that's when it's needed. One cable car in the morning, one boat in the afternoon, and no fixed plan for the hours in between — Garda is a place to sit beside rather than a list to work through, and after yesterday you'll want the gap.

If the summit is in cloud, invert the day: take an early boat to Limone, spend the morning there, and ride up in the afternoon once the wind has usually cleared the ridge. If the cable car is shut altogether — it closes for maintenance in March and from November into mid-December — the substitute is the drive north and up to the Tremosine plateau above the western shore, on a road that clings to the cliff the whole way.

Tonight: Malcesine, Lake Garda

1. Morning📍

   Monte Baldo by rotating cable car

   The valley station sits above the old town, a few minutes uphill on foot, and the second stage has cabins that turn slowly as they climb, so everyone gets the same view without fighting for a window. Buy online, which is cheaper than the window price. Strong wind can stop the lift. At the top you're on a ridge with the whole lake laid out on one side and the Brenta Dolomites on the other, and there's an easy hour of walking along the crest before it turns into a proper hike. Allow two to three hours including the ride.

   Time here: 3 hr

2. Afternoon📍

   Cross to Limone sul Garda

   

   1 hr 10 min from the previous stop

   Back down, then the ferry across to the western shore. Budget a little over an hour door to door, once the descent, the walk down to the pier, the wait for a sailing and a crossing of twenty minutes or so are all in. It doesn't run all year either, so check the timetable for your dates rather than assuming. Limone is a narrow strip of a town pressed between the water and a wall of rock, and the thing to see is the Limonaia del Castèl: the stone-pillared terraced lemon houses that made the town's living for centuries at a latitude where growing citrus was a genuinely improbable idea. An afternoon here doesn't need structure. Take a late boat back and let the evening go where it goes.

   Time here: 3 hr 30 min

Day 10: Sirmione, Then Verona

The fullest day on the route. The planned version is Sirmione in the morning, then Verona for the Arena and the evening — about two and a quarter hours of driving in all. Sirmione sits on a long thin peninsula at Garda's southern end: a moated castle, thermal water, and the ruins of a very large Roman house out on the tip. Then east to Verona, where the car goes back and the trip stops being a road trip. Get to Sirmione early: the causeway into the old town is a bottleneck by mid-morning in season.

Sirmione is in the plan, and it is also the first thing to cut if the day gets too long. Drop it if you'd rather have an unhurried Verona, if you left Malcesine late, or if the shore road is crawling — go straight to Verona and put the Arena and the evening walk first. Weekly closing days bite harder here than anywhere else: the Arena is normally closed on Mondays, Castelvecchio tomorrow likewise, and Sirmione's two ticketed sites each have a weekly closing day of their own. Performance days can also cut the Arena's daytime hours. Check all of them for your dates; if they collide, move the trip's start date rather than rearrange this day.

Tonight: Verona

1. Morning📍

   Rocca Scaligera, Sirmione

   

   Roughly an hour and a half south from Malcesine down the eastern shore, longer on summer weekends. The old town is a limited-traffic zone: park in the large lots at the landward end of the peninsula and walk in over the drawbridge. The castle is a thirteenth-century Scaligeri fortress with its own enclosed harbour, moated on every side, and it's as good from the outside as from within. Allow forty-five minutes if you climb the tower, less if you don't.

   Time here: 45 min

2. Midday📍

   Grotte di Catullo and the point

   25 min from the previous stop

   Twenty-five minutes on foot out along the peninsula through the old town, or a small road train if the day is hot. The Grotte aren't caves: they're the collapsed remains of a very large first-century Roman villa spread across the tip of the peninsula among old olive trees, with water on three sides. Bring water of your own — there's almost no shade — and note that the ticket office shuts well before the gates. The walk back is the town's best half hour: the lanes are touristy, but the view at the end of each one isn't.

   Time here: 1 hr 45 min

3. Afternoon📍

   Verona: the Arena and Piazza Bra

   

   45 min from the previous stop

   Forty-five minutes east on the motorway. Leave the car in one of the signposted garages outside the walls — Verona's centre is a limited-traffic zone — and if this is where you're dropping it off, do that now rather than tomorrow morning. The Arena is a first-century Roman amphitheatre still in use every summer, which is the unusual part: during the opera season the bowl holds modern stage sets, so what you see is a working theatre rather than a clean ruin. Piazza Bra outside it is where Verona does its evening, and the pink stone underfoot is the local limestone.

   Time here: 2 hr

4. Evening · Optional📍

   Piazza delle Erbe and the evening

   10 min from the previous stop

   Ten minutes on foot up Via Mazzini. Piazza delle Erbe is the old Roman forum, now a long market square hemmed in by frescoed houses and the Torre dei Lamberti, and it works best after dark once the crowd around Juliet's balcony a street away has thinned. Walk on through the arch into Piazza dei Signori next door, which is quieter and better. Dinner happens somewhere around here; in my experience, a street or two off Via Mazzini is where prices ease and the menus stop being printed in five languages.

   Time here: 2 hr

Day 11: Verona, and Home

A half day rather than a full one, built around what can be reached on foot within twenty minutes of the centre and finished with the view that puts the whole city in one frame. Then half an hour to Verona's airport — which is why this trip is built to fly home from Verona, not Milan.

Stuck with a flight out of Milan? Don't shave this morning to make it work: move the last night to Milan instead and give the city the day Day 1 didn't. If you must fly from Milan on Day 11, the drive and train options are in the last block below — and pick a late flight.

1. Morning📍

   Castelvecchio and the Ponte Scaligero

   Fifteen minutes' walk west from Piazza Bra, and worth the walk even on a departure morning. Castelvecchio is a fourteenth-century Scaligeri castle rebuilt as a museum by Carlo Scarpa in the 1960s, and the building is as much the reason to go as the paintings inside it — Scarpa's interventions in concrete and steel against the old brick are studied by architects for good reason. It is normally closed on Mondays. Walk out over the Ponte Scaligero, the fortified bridge attached to it, and look back: the bridge was blown up in 1945 and rebuilt from its own stones, fished back out of the Adige.

   Time here: 1 hr 45 min

2. Midday · Optional📍

   The funicular up to Castel San Pietro

   25 min from the previous stop

   Across the river and twenty-five minutes on foot through the centre, or a short taxi. The funicular climbs the hill in a little over a minute, costs a couple of euros return and runs late into the evening through the summer half of the year. The terrace at the top looks straight down on the Roman theatre, the bend of the river and the whole of the old city — the last view of the trip, and the one worth having. Half an hour.

   Time here: 1 hr

3. Afternoon📍

   The drive out

   30 min from the previous stop

   Verona Villafranca is about half an hour from the centre and the obvious end to this trip: drop the car there and be done. If you have to fly from Milan, that is a different plan: either drive — a little over two hours to Malpensa, somewhat less to Linate, returning the car at that airport if your rental allows it — or return the car in Verona and take the train from Porta Nuova to Milano Centrale, about an hour and a quarter, then transfer on: the Malpensa Express adds around fifty minutes, the metro to Linate less. After eleven days of driving, the train is the gentler ending, but it needs a later flight.