Best Time to Visit Lake Como: Weather, Gardens & Ferries

Check your dates

Pick a day to see whether Villa Monastero is open and its hours, which ferry timetable applies, how busy that month is in Varenna and the weather: the live forecast up to about two weeks ahead, the long-term average after that.

What each time of year is like

September: warm, fairly settled and still busy

September highs average about 24°C near Varenna, warm enough for dinner outside and comfortable for a slow walk through the villa garden. It is also one of the drier months of the warm half of the year: the long-term average at Como has rain on about 7 days in September, against 10 in June and 12 in May. Villa Monastero’s garden is open daily from 09:30 to 19:30, and the house museum every day except Tuesday. The summer ferry timetable carries on into October (in 2026 it ran until 4 October), so the car ferries to Bellagio and Menaggio still run late into the evening.

The catch is company. About 8,000 visitors arrived to stay in Varenna in September 2025, nearly as many as in July, and day-trippers come on top of that. If you want a room in Varenna itself, book it early.

June: the longest villa hours, with more showers

June is a close second. It is the first month when the garden and the house museum both open every day, from 09:30 to 20:00, so a Tuesday visit includes the house museum and there is time for an early-evening walk through the garden. Highs average about 25°C. The cost is rain: about 10 rainy days in an average June at Como, against 7 in September. Summer thunderstorms have started by then, and in the southern Alps they usually build over the mountains in the late afternoon. Villa Carlotta, across the lake at Tremezzo, calls May the month of roses and notes that they are still flowering in June.

April and May: the gardens in flower

Spring is when the lake’s villa gardens are in flower. At Villa Carlotta, the rhododendrons are in full bloom between mid-March and mid-April, camellias are the first big flowering of the season and roses take over in May. Villa Monastero publishes no flowering calendar, but its garden holds a collection of English roses, rare wisterias and peonies among more than 900 plants, along about two kilometres of shore between Varenna and Fiumelatte. From April the garden opens daily from 09:30 to 19:30, and the house museum every day except Tuesday.

Spring is also the cooler, wetter side of the season. April highs average about 18°C and May highs about 22°C, so take a layer for the evening ferry. May is the wettest month of the year, with 161 mm of rain on about 12 days in an average May at Como, so pack a waterproof and leave a spare half-day in case a morning is lost to rain. April is noticeably quieter than May: about 5,600 visitors arrived to stay in Varenna in April 2025, against about 7,500 in May. The ferry operator warns of ticket-office queues on public holidays, which in spring 2027 fall on 28 and 29 March (Easter), 25 April and 1 May.

July and August: the warmest months, and busy ones

July and August are the months for swimming, long dinners by the water and boat trips in the evening. July highs average about 28°C near Varenna and August highs about 27°C, and the garden and house museum are both open every day until 20:00. They are also busy months in the village. Overnight arrivals in Varenna peak in July, at about 8,500 in 2025, and Navigazione Laghi warns of queues at its ticket offices in summer and on holidays, advising passengers to arrive about 20 minutes before departure. Ferragosto, on 15 August, is Italy’s main summer holiday.

The villa’s long summer hours help. You can visit the garden soon after it opens at 09:30 or in the early evening, when it is cooler than the middle of the day, and the shared sunset boat tour with a Prosecco aperitif from Varenna makes use of the long evenings.

October: quieter, with shorter villa hours

October suits you if fewer visitors matter more than warmth. About 5,500 visitors arrived to stay in Varenna in October 2025, roughly two-thirds of the July figure, and Villa Monastero’s garden is still open every day, from 10:00 to 18:00, with the house museum closed on Tuesdays. Highs average about 18°C and the long-term average has rain on about 7 days. The ferries change to an autumn timetable in early October (5 October in 2026), with slightly fewer crossings than in summer, and to the winter timetable at the start of November.

November to March: a quiet winter stay

Winter in Varenna is quiet and, around Christmas, festive. From 6 November to 10 January the villa garden is lit for Christmas and stays open until 20:00, with lights along the main avenue and the lakeside columns and a Christmas tree of about seven metres in the loggia. It comes with real trade-offs. From November to February the villa opens Thursday to Monday, with daily openings on 6–9 December, 26–31 December and 1–10 January, and it is closed on Christmas Day. In March the garden opens daily again while the house museum keeps to Thursday to Monday.

The winter ferry timetable runs from 2 November 2026 to 14 March 2027, with 17 weekday crossings from Varenna to Bellagio and the last one shortly after 21:00, against 23 crossings and a last boat after 23:00 in the summer timetable. January highs average about 6°C. Overnight arrivals in Varenna fall to fewer than 700 a month from December to February, against about 8,000 a month in summer. Winter works best for a slow stay built around the village and the garden lights, and less well for a day of hopping between villas by boat.