Lake Maggiore, Orta and the Matterhorn

This Riviera Travel escorted tour offers seven nights around some of Italy's and Switzerland's lesser-visited and well-known alpine lakes and mountain scenery. Starting at Lake Maggiore’s calm shores in Stresa or Baveno, the route includes a boat trip to the Borromean Islands, where Isola Bella's 17th-century villa reveals terraced gardens with marble statues and white peacocks. The colourful fishing village of Isola dei Pescatori provides a different pace with its historic cobbled streets.

From there, the journey crosses into Switzerland. After a lakeside boat trip to Cannobio, you take the Centovalli Railway from Locarno through a narrow valley with panoramic views, threading past chestnut woods and tumbling mountain cascades. Back in Italy, Lake Como’s elegant architecture and the botanical displays of Villa Carlotta offer a contrast before a free day to wander Stresa or Baveno.

The tour’s peak arrives with the Matterhorn vista from Zermatt, reached via the Simplon Pass. The village’s car-free streets curve towards alpine paths framed by cowbells and mountain streams. Finally, the small and relatively quiet Lake Orta offers a medieval village with colourful shuttered windows leading to an island basilica that hides a carved black marble pulpit and a legendary dragon’s vertebra. It’s a thoughtful combination of lakeside charm and high Alpine views.