Every design for Como

Julius Caesar had the marsh at the southern tip of the lake drained and laid out a walled town on the Roman grid, and the heart of Como still keeps that plan. Before him, the Orobii and later the Insubres lived on the wooded hills around; after him came a city that would give the world Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, Paolo Giovio, Alessandro Volta and the futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia.

To the people of Como, home is a feeling of being held: a small basin closed in by green hills, the lake opening out to the north, the Alps not far beyond and Switzerland right at the edge of town. It is the walk along the lakeside to the Tempio Voltiano, the bells of the Duomo di Como, the stones of the Broletto and the Basilica di Sant'Abbondio, the clean modernist lines of the ex Casa del Fascio. It is silk, too, the trade the city has worked for generations and still keeps alive in the Museo della Seta.

However far you go, coming back to Como means that first glimpse of the water between the hills, and the quiet certainty that you are home.