Hikes near Milan

Hikes that start less than 80 km from Milan as the crow flies, around Lake Como, the Lecco area and Lake Maggiore, nearest first.

This is the list for anyone who leaves Milan in the morning and wants to be home for dinner: every hike whose starting point lies less than 80 kilometres from the city centre as the crow flies, which in practice means the Triangolo Lariano, the Lecco area and the Grigne, plus a trip to Lake Maggiore.

Next to each hike we show its distance from the centre of Milan: it is measured as the crow flies, so the road will always be a little longer, but it is a good way to rank the options before checking the traffic.

Good to know when leaving Milan

The mountains closest to Milan also have a place in literature: the novel I promessi sposi opens on the Lecco branch of Lake Como and the mountains around it, among them the Resegone, so called, Manzoni writes, because its many peaks in a row make it look like a saw. The name comes from resega, Lombard dialect for saw, and that serrated profile is still the quickest way to get your bearings when you look north from the plain on a clear day. Olate and Acquate, on the slopes of the mountain, have long competed for the honour of being home to Lucia's house.

The outing to Lake Maggiore, on the other hand, takes you into the Cadorna Line, the system of fortifications officially called the Frontiera Nord, built during the First World War to defend the plain against a possible invasion through Switzerland. That invasion never came, and the trenches, tunnels and gun emplacements were never used in combat; in the Second World War some of them served the partisans. For the tunnels it is worth bringing a head torch, and the rule is to take nothing away of what you find along the route.