Lake Como Museums: What to Visit When It Rains

On Mondays, in the two main towns on the lake, every civic museum with published opening hours is closed. That covers the Tempio Voltiano, the Pinacoteca civica and the Museo Didattico della Seta in Como, and Palazzo delle Paure, Palazzo Belgiojoso, the Torre Viscontea and Villa Manzoni in Lecco. Anyone looking for Lake Como museums for a rainy day should therefore start from the calendar, before the collections.

The second obstacle is the state of the venues. In Como the Museo Archeologico Paolo Giovio and the Museo storico Giuseppe Garibaldi have their galleries closed for maintenance work, according to the Comune’s website, and several smaller museums open only in season, by reservation, or at hours that no source publishes. This guide lays out the museums of the lake area by area and says, for each one, what you can rely on and what to check before setting out.

The site has 26 museum entries; for a rainy day, 20 remain, plus Villa Manzoni, which houses the Museo Manzoniano. Six are left out: two are closed for maintenance, and four are outdoors, require a long staircase or are being restored. We explain which ones and why further on.

How We Checked Hours and Openings

Every entry on the site starts from official sources: the museum’s or the Comune’s website, the reference museum network (in Lecco the Sistema Museale Urbano Lecchese, SiMUL) and, for some museums, the entry in Regione Lombardia’s register of recognised museums. The hours given here were re-read against the sources at the end of September 2026. The entries are prepared with the help of artificial intelligence tools for research and writing, and every piece of data is compared with the source before publication.

When two official sources contradict each other we do not pick one: we say so. That is the case of the Museo civico di Erba, which appears closed on one Comune page and open by reservation on another. When a piece of data is not published, such as the regular hours of the redesigned Museo Moto Guzzi, we write that instead of guessing.

In the text you will find four conditions: published hours, seasonal opening, visits only by reservation or on contact, and status to be checked. They are the same ones that appear in the individual entries, each with the date of the last check.

Museums in Como: Three Open and Two Closed

The Comune di Como groups five civic museums into a circuit, with combined-ticket options and, for those who live in the municipality or the province, the annual CoMmUnity card. Three venues can be visited, two are closed for works.

Tempio Voltiano

On the lakefront, the Tempio Voltiano opened on 16 July 1928 for the centenary of Alessandro Volta’s death and holds the scientist’s original instruments: several versions of his voltaic pile, capacitors, Leyden jars, electrometers and equipment for studying gases. The neoclassical building, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, was funded by the cotton industrialist and senator Francesco Somaini and designed by Federico Frigerio.

The upper gallery displays personal effects and honours, including medals awarded by rulers such as Napoleon Bonaparte. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, with last entry at 17:30.

Pinacoteca civica di Palazzo Volpi

Opened in 1989 in the seventeenth-century Palazzo Volpi, the Pinacoteca civica occupies three floors with works from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Its best-known core is the sixteenth-century series of portraits of Famous Men conceived by the historian Paolo Giovio; there are also drawings by the Futurist architect Antonio Sant’Elia from Como and works by the abstract artists of the Gruppo Como.

The hours are the same as the Tempio Voltiano. Tickets can be bought on site or at museicomo.vivaticket.it.

Museo Didattico della Seta

Opened on 4 October 1990 in the premises of the Paolo Carcano silk technical institute, the Museo Didattico della Seta covers 900 square metres in eight rooms. It traces the whole Como silk chain, from silkworm rearing to reeling, throwing, printing and weaving, with original machinery and looms from the mills that made Como one of Europe’s main silk centres in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

It opens on Tuesday from 14:00 to 18:00 and from Wednesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 18:00. A full ticket costs €10, reduced €7, with family rates.

Museo Archeologico and Museo Garibaldi

The Museo Archeologico Paolo Giovio, opened in 1897 in the former residence of the Giovio counts, tells the story of the Como area from prehistory to Roman times. The Museo storico Giuseppe Garibaldi, opened in 1932 in Palazzo Olginati, gathers Risorgimento relics and recalls Garibaldi’s stay in Como in 1866.

For now the galleries are closed to the public for maintenance work, according to the Comune’s official website. For the Giovio a service to consult the finds on request remains active.

From Tuesday to Sunday the Tempio Voltiano and the Pinacoteca are open all day; from Wednesday to Sunday so is the Museo della Seta, in the morning and in the afternoon.

Museums in Lecco: Four Venues Close Together

Lecco has a network of civic museums, SiMUL, with three venues in the centre and one on the eastern outskirts. Opening hours differ from venue to venue, and Sunday is the day when they fit together best.

Palazzo delle Paure

On Piazza XX Settembre, Palazzo delle Paure is a neo-medieval building from 1916, built to house the Finance Administration. Its nickname is traced back to the tax functions carried out there until 1964, and since 6 October 2012 the palace has been a museum venue.

The first floor hosts temporary exhibitions. The second holds the Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery, with works from the eighteenth century to today, a section of graphic art and photography, and a photo archive of about 4,000 images of the Lecco area. On the third floor is the Lecco Mountaineering Museum, with a multimedia section.

The palace is closed on Mondays, opens on Tuesday from 10:00 to 14:00 and from Wednesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00. A full ticket costs €6, reduced €4, special reduced €2.

Torre Viscontea

On the same square, the Torre Viscontea is the only intact surviving part of Lecco’s Visconti fortifications. It is a fourteenth-century tower, where in the seventeenth century a Spanish garrison was quartered, mentioned by Manzoni in The Betrothed.

Today the first floor hosts temporary exhibitions and admission is free. Hours are limited and tied to the exhibitions: Thursday 10:00 to 13:00, Friday and Saturday 14:00 to 18:00, Sunday 10:00 to 18:00. Access is by stairs and the tower is not accessible to visitors with reduced mobility.

Palazzo Belgiojoso

Home of the Civic Museums since 1927, Palazzo Belgiojoso brings together on Corso Matteotti the Archaeological Museum, the Historical Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Civic Planetarium. The archaeological museum runs from the Palaeolithic to the early Middle Ages and includes a menhir from Ello; the historical one covers the Risorgimento, the area’s industrial history, the Second World War and the Resistance.

The Natural History Museum, founded in 1888, has partly nineteenth-century display cases and a hall devoted to the Lariosaurus, the “Lecco saurian”. The three museums are free of charge, while the Planetarium is paid. The palace opens Tuesday to Friday from 10:00 to 14:00 and Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00.

Villa Manzoni

On the eastern outskirts, in the Caleotto district, Villa Manzoni was for almost two centuries the family home of Alessandro Manzoni. Today it houses the Museo Manzoniano, with manuscripts, autographs and relics, and the Galleria Comunale d’Arte.

It is closed on Mondays and can be visited by reservation: for hours and reservations the source is the SiMUL website.

Sunday is the only day when Palazzo delle Paure, the Torre Viscontea and Palazzo Belgiojoso are all open from 10:00 to 18:00. The first two face the same square, while Palazzo Belgiojoso is less than a kilometre away. To visit several venues a combined ticket makes sense, which SiMUL lists at €8 full, €6 reduced and €4 special reduced.

Museums of the Lecco Branch and the Upper Lake

Going up the eastern shore the museums get smaller and the hours more variable. Here the rule of checking the day before matters even more.

Civico Museo Setificio Monti

In 1818 Pietro Monti turned an older building in Abbadia Lariana into a silk-throwing mill, using the energy of the nearby water. The main activity ended in 1934, the Comune bought the buildings in 1978 and the Civico Museo Setificio Monti opened in 1998.

It holds a large circular silk twister from 1818, restored and put back into working order, presented as one of the largest working silk twisters in Europe, along with iron and cast-iron water wheels and three rectangular twisters from the nineteenth century. It is open Wednesday to Sunday and closed Monday and Tuesday; detailed hours vary by day and season. A full ticket costs €5, reduced €3.

Piani Resinelli Mining Park

The Piani Resinelli Mining Park is not a museum in the strict sense, but it is visited under cover, in a tunnel. The mines, worked since the sixteenth century, are explored with a guide: the Anna mine has a fully horizontal route and, according to the operator, a minimum age of 3, while the Sottocavallo mine runs over seven levels.

The park stands at about 1,300 metres, in the municipality of Abbadia Lariana. Inside the tunnel the temperature is 10-12 °C, so suitable clothing and footwear are needed. Visits last about 90 minutes, the recommended minimum age is 3 and opening is typically on weekends and public holidays. The site is not accessible to visitors with motor disabilities.

Museo della Barca Lariana

In a nineteenth-century spinning mill at Pianello del Lario, the Museo della Barca Lariana preserves more than 400 historic hulls: rowing boats, gondolas, fishing, hunting and smuggling boats, pleasure and racing motorboats, sailing boats and old working barges. The fleet is joined by over 300 engines and a library of more than 2,500 books and historic magazines.

The museum, founded in 1982 on the initiative of Gian Alberto Zanoletti, closed in 2000 and reopened in the summer of 2018; since 2024 it has been recognised by Regione Lombardia as a museum collection. It opens Thursday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00.

Museo della Fine della Guerra

In Palazzo Manzi, the stage of the events of April 1945, the Museo della Fine della Guerra tells, through artefacts, documents, testimonies and unseen footage, the story of the last months of the Second World War and the capture of Benito Mussolini and the leaders of the Italian Social Republic. The exhibition is multimedia.

From April to October it is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00 to 13:00 and 15:00 to 18:00, and also on public-holiday Mondays; from November to March entry is by reservation only. Last entry is 30 minutes before closing.

Bellano: Museo Giancarlo Vitali and San Nicolao

Bellano has two venues in the historic centre linked by a single ticket, which also includes the Orrido. The Museo Giancarlo Vitali, opened on 30 April 2025 in Palazzo Lorla, shows one hundred works by the painter and engraver born in Bellano (1929-2018), a selection from seventy years of his output.

San Nicolao is a former church mentioned since 1295 and restored in 2024. The ground floor hosts temporary contemporary art exhibitions, the upper floor the permanent collection of works in embossed and chased copper by Danilo Vitali. Hours vary through the season and are updated at discoveringbellano.eu.

Museo delle Grigne

Founded in 1959 and housed since 2016 in Villa Clotilde, in Esino Lario, the Museo delle Grigne has a palaeontology section with minerals and fossils, an archaeology section with Roman and Celtic finds, and an ethno-anthropology section on the life of the inhabitants up to the early twentieth century. The route is completed by a section on the Scuola di Arazzeria, active from the 1930s to the 1960s, and a room on Wikimania 2016.

Admission is by free donation. Hours change through the year and, for updates, the museum’s website refers to the municipal office, telephone 0341 860 111.

Museo Moto Guzzi

Inside the historic perimeter of the factory in Mandello del Lario, where Moto Guzzi motorcycles have been built since 1921, the Museo Moto Guzzi was redesigned in 2026 with a route of more than 150 pieces, including historic production models, prototypes that never reached the market, famous engines and racing motorcycles. It was presented to the public during the Moto Guzzi World Days on 3-6 September.

Regular hours, tickets and visiting arrangements had not been published at the end of September 2026. Before setting out it is worth consulting the official Moto Guzzi website, bearing in mind that older guides describe a different museum.

Museums of the Central Lake, the Triangolo Lariano and Brianza

Museo degli Strumenti per la Navigazione

In the old tower-house of San Giovanni in Bellagio, the Museo degli Strumenti per la Navigazione holds Gianni Gini’s collection: over two hundred navigation instruments from the sixteenth century, according to public sources, while the museum’s website speaks of over 600 nautical objects collected by its founder. There are compasses, astrolabes, eighteenth-century Venetian telescopes, marine chronometers, sundials and an armillary sphere.

Three floors arrange the objects by function: latitude, longitude, ship’s logs and instruments for plotting a course. The website indicates a winter closure from 15 October to 30 April, so anyone who wants to visit must do so before 15 October.

Museo del Ciclismo Madonna del Ghisallo

Opened on 14 October 2006 on the initiative of the champion Fiorenzo Magni, next to the Sanctuary of the Ghisallo (since 1949 the Madonna has been the patron saint of cyclists), the Museo del Ciclismo tells the history of the bicycle over three floors. Its five sections include the Great Encyclopedia of Cycling, the champions’ relics, about a hundred period films, forty-eight champions presented in as many circular rooms, and a part on racing-bike design.

It opens in season, roughly from late February or early March to 1 November, with continuous hours. It belongs to the Abbonamento Musei Lombardia circuit.

Museo civico di Erba

In the Villa Comunale di Crevenna, the Museo civico di Erba has eight rooms in chronological order, from the geological eras to the modern age. Among the finds are a Lombard spatha with silver decoration, Roman funerary goods, the remains of a cave bear from the Buco del Piombo cave and forty species of Jurassic ammonites from Alpe Turati.

Founded in 1961, opened to the public in 1964 and moved to its current site in 1977, it is today the most uncertain case in this guide. The Comune’s page says it is temporarily closed, with no reopening date, while a reservations page updated in May 2021 listed free visits by appointment. A phone call is needed: 031 3355341.

Casa Natale di Giuseppe Parini

In the house at Bosisio Parini where the poet who wrote Il Giorno was born on 23 May 1729, the Casa Natale preserves period furnishings, rare editions, paintings and documents in four rooms. It can be visited on contact with the Comune’s secretariat, telephone 031 3580511 extension 1, which gives access instructions.

Museo del Cotone at Villa Guaita

On the first floor of Villa Guaita in Ponte Lambro, the Museo del Cotone is an interactive museum opened in April 2024. It tells the story of cotton and of the former cotton mill, founded in 1840, which came to employ over 1,500 people and closed in 2012.

The route includes two rooms with interactive and virtual displays and an experience made of touch, smell, sight and sound, plus a space for children’s workshops. The official pages consulted publish neither hours nor prices: to visit, contact the Comune, telephone 031 623240.

Museo etnografico e dell’acqua

Since 2004 the Museo etnografico e dell’acqua in Albese con Cassano has occupied a building of 1822 that was a covered washhouse with the primary school on the floor above. It is organised in four sections marked by the colour of the arches: the journey of water, water use in the home, water use in the countryside, and the fire engine, a nineteenth-century fire pump.

It can be visited every day, but only by reservation.

How Much Lake Como Museums Cost

The prices below are those published by the official sources at the end of September 2026. Where sources differ or give no figure, the table says so.

Museum	Admission
Museo Didattico della Seta (Como)	€10 full, €7 reduced; family rates from €7 per adult plus €3.50 per child
Tempio Voltiano and Pinacoteca civica (Como)	paid, tickets on site or at museicomo.vivaticket.it
Palazzo delle Paure (Lecco)	€6 full, €4 reduced, €2 special reduced; combined €8, €6, €4
Palazzo Belgiojoso (Lecco)	Archaeological, Historical and Natural History museums free; Planetarium paid
Torre Viscontea (Lecco)	free
Civico Museo Setificio Monti (Abbadia Lariana)	€5 full, €3 reduced
Museo della Fine della Guerra (Dongo)	€5 full; €3 ages 12 to 18 and over 65; free up to age 11 and for visitors with disabilities
Museo delle Grigne (Esino Lario)	free donation
Museo del Ciclismo (Magreglio)	paid with reductions; free for young children and visitors with disabilities
Museo della Barca Lariana (Pianello del Lario)	paid; sources give no consistent figure
Museo civico di Erba	free according to the 2021 page, status to be checked

For Bellano the single ticket covers the Museo Giancarlo Vitali, San Nicolao and the Orrido, but the current price is only on the official website. For Moto Guzzi, Ponte Lambro and Albese con Cassano no price has been published.

Museums with Children and Accessibility

Some museums have features designed for younger visitors, and they are documented by the sources. The Museo del Cotone in Ponte Lambro has a route with touch and smell stimuli and a space for workshops. For the Anna mine at the Piani Resinelli the operator gives a minimum age of 3.

The Museo Didattico della Seta has family rates, and in Dongo admission is free up to age 11. In Lecco the Planetarium and the Lariosaurus hall in Palazzo Belgiojoso round off a morning that is largely free of charge.

On accessibility, the sources consulted indicate the following. For the other museums they give no information.

Museum	Accessibility indicated
Palazzo delle Paure	accessible to visitors with reduced mobility
Torre Viscontea	not accessible (access by stairs)
Natural History Museum (Palazzo Belgiojoso)	fully accessible
Museo della Fine della Guerra	fully accessible
Museo della Barca Lariana	fully accessible
Museo delle Grigne	fully accessible
Piani Resinelli Mining Park	not accessible to visitors with motor disabilities
Museo civico di Erba	partly accessible, to be arranged with the museum (2021 page)

Three Rainy Days Already Planned

In Lecco, on a Sunday. At 10:00 start with Palazzo Belgiojoso, with its three free museums, then move on to Palazzo delle Paure and the Torre Viscontea, which face the same square. All three venues are open from 10:00 to 18:00 and the only compulsory expense is the Palazzo delle Paure ticket, €6 full.

In Como, Wednesday to Sunday. In the morning the Tempio Voltiano on the lakefront, then the Museo Didattico della Seta, open until 13:00 and again from 14:00, and in the afternoon the Pinacoteca civica, open until 18:00. The combined ticket for the civic museums and the CoMmUnity card for residents reduce the cost.

On the Upper Lake, Thursday to Sunday, April to October. The Museo della Fine della Guerra in Dongo opens from 10:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 18:00, the Museo della Barca Lariana at Pianello del Lario from 10:00 to 18:00. The two venues are about two and a half kilometres apart and can be combined in a single day.

What Does Not Work in the Rain

Four museums listed on the site are not suited to a wet day. The Percorso Segantini in Caglio and the MACA in Morterone are outdoor routes. The Fondazione Palomar in Pognana Lario opens on a calendar and is reached by over 400 steps or by boat. The Torre di Maggiana in Mandello del Lario has an opening status to be checked, because of a restoration project.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Lake Como museums are open on Monday?

No civic museum in Como or Lecco with published hours opens on Mondays. In Dongo you can enter on public-holiday Mondays from April to October. For the others, such as the Ghisallo (continuous hours in season, with no days indicated) and the museum in Albese (by reservation only), it is worth asking first.

Which museums are free?

In Lecco the Torre Viscontea is free and, in Palazzo Belgiojoso, so are the Archaeological Museum, the Historical Museum and the Natural History Museum. The Museo delle Grigne in Esino Lario runs on free donations. The MACA in Morterone and the Fondazione Palomar are free, but outdoors or hard to reach.

Do I need to book?

Villa Manzoni is visited by reservation, the museum in Albese only by reservation, the Museo della Fine della Guerra from November to March, and the Casa Natale of Parini on contact with the Comune. The Mining Park offers guided visits only. For Erba and Ponte Lambro it is best to phone.

Is the information up to date?

It was checked against the official sources at the end of September 2026. Hours and closures change, which is why the date appears at the top of the page and in every entry. If you find different information, write to info@visitlario.com: we check corrections against the source and publish them.

Before You Set Out

The most reliable method for a rainy day is to choose the area, then the day, then the museum. The entry for each venue gives its source and the date of the last check; the site map lets you filter museums by area and see which ones are close together.

If you are still planning your trip, also read Getting to Lake Como, with trains, boats and ferries checked against the official 2026 timetables, and the itineraries for sunny days.