The ancient settlement of Chiavenna, in Lombardy, near Italy’s border with Switzerland, was once well known among travellers. “Lovely Chiavenna … mountain peaks, huge boulders, with rippling miniature torrents and lovely young flowers … and grassy heights with rich Spanish chestnuts,” wrote George Eliot in 1860.
Eliot wasn’t the only writer to rhapsodise about this charming town. Edith Wharton described it as “fantastically picturesque … an exuberance of rococo”. For Mary Shelley it was “paradise … glowing in rich and sunny vegetation”, while Goethe described it as “like a dream”.
For those pioneering travellers, gentle, sunlit Chiavenna marked their arrival in Italy, having crossed the Splügen Pass, one of the earliest transalpine routes connecting northern Europe to the south. Today, few tourists bother with Chiavenna, heading instead to the better-known Como that lies 60 miles (100km) to the south. They are missing a treat.
Intrigued by the praise once heaped upon this mysterious town, with a picture-perfect location at the foot of the snow-flecked Alps, I decided to spend a week here with my husband. Surrounded by thick chestnut woods and bisected by the crystal-clear River Mera, Valchiavenna (the town’s valley) holds numerous surprises too, from the area’s crotti (natural caves), to a B&B in the ornate villa once inhabited by the great 18th-century painter Angelica Kauffman. It also has dozens of magnificent hiking and cycling trails through a spectacular landscape of waterfalls, glacially sculpted rocks, mossy woodlands, ancient mule tracks and abandoned villages. With barely a tourist in sight.
I travelled from Zurich, taking a train to St Moritz, then a bus over the spectacular Maloja Pass, down 20 vertiginous hairpin bends (known as tornanti) carved from the rock face of the Alps, with sweeping views – lakes, peaks, forests – in all directions. This €20 one-hour bus ride also stops off at the Swiss village of Stampa (birthplace of the artist Alberto Giacometti and home of the Museo Ciäsa Granda, which is dedicated to him), as well as Sils Maria village, home of the Nietzsche-Haus, where Nietzsche spent seven formative summers in the late 19th century, and now a museum. Meanwhile, my husband travelled to Chiavenna by train from Milan, a journey that skirted the scenic shores of numerous lakes, including Lake Como.
Our first day was spent hiking 6 miles upriver along the beautiful Via Bregaglia, a 24-mile hiking trail running from Soglio in Switzerland to Chiavenna, to reach one of the region’s best-known restaurants, the family-run, Michelin-starred Lanterna Verde. After feasting on trout caught minutes before from their own lake, we took the bus back to explore Chiavenna’s old centre, which dates from the 15th century (the medieval town was destroyed by fire). Described by an Italian friend as “like Verona but without the amphitheatre, crowds and chain stores”, the network of cobbled alleys containing ornate frescoed buildings and elaborate fountains is testament to its past as a wealthy trading town.
Chiavenna is home to dozens of crotti, natural cellars embedded in the rocky flanks of the surrounding mountains. Before the advent of refrigeration, the crotti were used for storing wine, cheese and cured meats, and often as places to socialise. Today several operate as restaurants and bars: at Crotto Ubiali and Crotto Ombra, we tucked into two of the town’s signature dishes: sciatt – melt-in-the-mouth buckwheat fritters stuffed with cheese – and gnocchi alla chiavennasca – bread-based dumplings served with melted butter and crispy fried sage. At Crotto Belvedere, we sipped local wine – try Opera, a delicious white from nearby vineyards, that arrives in a bottle labelled with the work of a local artist.
On our second day we explored the Parco delle Marmitte dei Giganti (“giants’ cauldrons”), which slopes up from the town’s eastern edge – a mass of mineral-rich green stone (pietre verdi) natural craters, caused by glacial erosion over thousands of years. From here, hiking trails fan out, tantalisingly, in all directions. We took the 50-minute path to Uschione, an empty, roadless village of stone houses, a church and cemetery, perched high above the valley and wreathed in soft wisps of cloud. Four hundred people once lived here, but today the only inhabitants are long‑eared sheep and Mendi who runs the Rifugio Uschione (doubles from €160), a rustic yet stylish priest’s house where we spent an utterly silent night of perfect sleep. The next morning we took a mossy path upwards to explore abandoned forest crotti, before turning northwards to bask in panoramic views across the valley and up towards the soaring Rhaetian Alps.
Back in Chiavenna, we headed to the Palazzo Salis B&B, once home to Angelica Kauffman. Here, a lavish frescoed room, complete with antique furniture, painted ceiling, chequered marble floor and breakfast on the terrace costs from €130. After stopping for cups of cappuccino and cioccolata calda (melted dark chocolate with a splash of thick cream) in Sierra Nevada, the town’s cutest roastery, we walked a mile north to Piuro for a tour of the most eye‑popping renaissance villa: Palazzo Vertemate Franchi. The sole surviving building from a 1618 landslide that destroyed the entire village and killed more than 1,000 inhabitants, the palazzo (advance booking and guided tours only) boasts exquisite marquetry, fantastical frescoes and elaborately carved panelling.
Giddy from all these unexpected delights, we strolled a further mile to the dramatic Acquafraggia waterfalls. This double waterfall tumbles 1,300 metres in a series of cascades, and was described by Leonardo da Vinci as “making a beautiful sound and a marvellous spectacle”. With our cheeks gently misted, we climbed the ancient mule path (2,867 stone steps) up to the abandoned village of Savogno, where old stone houses cling precipitously to the mountainside.
A day later, we drove up the 51 tightly twisting, hairpin bends to explore the Splügen Pass. This 40-minute journey climbs 1,780 metres and propelled us into an utterly different, much chillier landscape. We spent a contented night at the legendary coaching inn Albergo della Posta, (doubles from €130) in the tiny hamlet of Montespluga. Little has changed here in 75 years – the 10 bedrooms are cosily panelled in pine, and retain their original furnace stoves.
With Shelley’s words about the pass in our heads – “naked and sublime … dim mists, chilling blasts and driving snow” – we walked a three-hour circular path to the Lago di Andossi, revelling in the landscape’s bleak austerity, with its eerily turquoise lakes, luminously green lichen and treeless, craggy peaks. This route also forms the beginning of the 20-mile Valchiavenna cycle path, which took third place in the Italian Green Way Cycle Road awards of 2022. Bike hire is available from Adam’s Bike Tours, and we vowed to return one day to cycle the route.
And then it was back to Chiavenna to investigate the Saturday market, sample its three gelaterias, explore the towering Parco Paradiso (a terraced botanical garden built on the site of the original castle), and to amble around the cloistered church of San Lorenzo, with its gloriously carved 12th-century font. We finished at Chiavenna’s high-security Museo del Tesoro or “treasure museum”, home to the extraordinary La Pace – a jaw-dropping, 11th-century bible cover with the finest goldsmithing and enamelling imaginable, encrusted with emeralds, rubies and pearls. It is yet another reminder of the important role Chiavenna once played in Europe’s history.
We ended our trip by pigging out on the locally inspired tasting menu – it was our wedding anniversary – at the family-run Villa Giade (which also has sleekly modern, reasonably priced bedrooms with the best views in town). Over glasses of wine from the local Nebbiolo grape, we pondered Chiavenna’s many hidden charms, before agreeing that this could be the most quietly romantic town we had ever visited.
For more information, visit valchiavenna.com
