Gaius Plinius the Elder and Gaius Plinius the Younger, 1stC Romans of remarkable industry and thirst for knowledge, were born at Como. To the Younger we owe our knowledge of the eruptions which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79. Their statues flank the main doorway to Como cathedral. In their later years they returned to their native province and set the fashion for acquiring real estate and building lakeside villas. Private ownership since their days has denied long sections of the waterfront to ordinary people – the consolation is that the properties have become overflowing baskets of flowers and shrubs. If you cannot walk among them you can always admire them from a boat.

Uncle and nephew built their villas along the shores of the Como ‘leg’ of the lake. The Younger’s favourites were called Comedy and Tragedy, one on a crag and the other on the shore so that, as he wrote, ‘from one you can look upon people fishing, from the other you can fish yourself, even from your bedroom, as though you were in a boat’.

Tragedy may have occupied the spot at Bellagio where Villa Serbelloni now stands. A third villa, called Pliniana, is at Torno, 8 km north of Como. Where the others stood is not known, but Milanese rock stars and dress designers will assure you that their villas on Lake Como incorporate steps or pavements hallowed by the footsteps of the two great diarists and historians of the Roman Empire.