Lombardia is Italy's economic engine and its most populous region — yet it contains some of the country's most beautiful landscapes. The Alps form its northern edge, dropping through foothills and lake districts before flattening into the broad Po Valley. Within a couple of hours you can go from Milan's fashion boutiques to mountain villages that haven't changed much in a century.
Milan dominates the region and deserves its reputation: the Duomo, the Last Supper, the Brera gallery, the Castello Sforzesco — it's a serious art city that also happens to be the centre of Italian fashion and finance. But Lombardia rewards those who push past it. Bergamo Alta is one of northern Italy's finest medieval hill towns, compact and walkable, with views across the plains that stretch all the way to Milan on a clear day. Mantua, ringed by lakes and stuffed with Renaissance frescoes, is genuinely undervisited.
The lakes are the region's great draw for outsiders, and justifiably so. Como has an elegant, slightly aristocratic feel — grand villas, manicured gardens, steep hillsides — that Lake Garda, bigger and more touristic, can't quite match. Maggiore, shared with Piemonte and Switzerland, has its own quieter charm. All three are best explored by ferry rather than car.
South of Milan, the Po Valley is less glamorous but has its moments: Pavia with its medieval towers and university, Cremona where the world's finest violins are still made, and the Certosa di Pavia, one of the most extravagant pieces of Renaissance architecture in Italy. Lombardia is a region where you keep finding things you didn't know to look for.
