· 6 min read · by Salimar Boat Tour
Orrido di Nesso: the gorge, the bridge and the best way to see it
Halfway between Como and Bellagio, on the eastern shore, the village of Nesso climbs the slope. Where the roofs open up, the mountain splits: two torrents come down, meet, and throw themselves into the lake beneath a single-arch stone bridge. This is the Orrido di Nesso, one of the most photographed places on Lake Como.
What the gorge is
The gorge is carved by two mountain torrents, the Tuf and the Nose. Local sources speak of a 200-metre waterfall: this is best understood as the cumulative drop of the valley you see from Piazza Castello, rather than a single sheer fall.
Water is at its highest between March and June, with the snowmelt. In August the flow is much reduced: if you are coming for the waterfall, spring is the season.
The Ponte della Civera
This is the arched stone bridge spanning the mouth of the gorge, connecting the hamlet of Coatesa to Riva del Castello. Its form is Romanesque and it is generally described as medieval; local tradition gives it Roman origins with a rebuild in the Middle Ages.
On the gorge walls you can still see the remains of water-powered machinery: wheels, metal structures and masonry bases from old mills, presses, hammers and silk-working plants.
Getting there and what to know
- Free entry, no set hours, open all the time
- You descend from Piazza Castello by a stairway of roughly 340 steps: easy going down, less so coming up
- Parking is very limited: long waits are reported in July and August. The C30 bus is a better idea
- About 30 minutes by car from Como, about 20 from Bellagio, on the SS583 road
- Closed shoes: the steps are often damp
Seeing it from the water
There is a second way, and for many it is the better one: looking at it from the lake. From the water you see the whole thing — the split in the mountain, the bridge, the houses clinging to the rock — which you never quite grasp from the steps. No parking, no stairs, no queue. We pass in front of Nesso on the two-hour tours and on the tour with a stop in Bellagio.
Nesso, a village with a long history
Around 1,200 inhabitants spread across hamlets climbing the slope. During the war between Como and Milan, from 1118 to 1127, Nesso sided with Isola Comacina: the Comaschi destroyed its castle in 1124. In 1497 Ludovico Sforza granted the fief of Nesso to Lucrezia Crivelli. A Renaissance castle linked to Gian Giacomo de' Medici, known as il Medeghino, was destroyed in 1531-1532: a crenellated wall survives, to which three turrets were added in the 19th century.
Leonardo da Vinci passed here too: in the Codex Atlanticus he notes "Nesso, land where a river falls with great force through a very great cleft in the mountain".
Cinema and painting
Alfred Hitchcock shot scenes for his first feature film, The Pleasure Garden (1925), on the lakeside terrace next to the Ponte della Civera. The gorge also appears in aquatints by the painters Federico and Carolina Lose, between the 18th and 19th centuries.
