Como sits at the southern tip of the lake that shares its name, and each autumn it becomes the finish line of Il Lombardia, the "Race of the Falling Leaves" and the final Monument of the cycling season.
The race's defining climb is the Madonna del Ghisallo, most often ridden from Bellagio: 8.6 kilometres averaging 6.2%, with a brutal opening 2.5 kilometres near 14% before the gradient eases. It has featured in the race since 1919, when Costante Girardengo crested it first, fifteen minutes clear of the field.
At the summit sits a small chapel, declared home to the patron saint of cyclists in 1949, and beside it a cycling museum holding more than fifty original maglie rosa — a genuine shrine, still visited by pros and amateurs riding the same road.
From Como, the roads around the lake offer everything from flat lakeside spinning to the Ghisallo's switchbacks and the notoriously steep Muro di Sormano further along Il Lombardia's route — a compact stretch of Lombardy that carries an outsized share of cycling's history.
