Bellagio

This guide to Bellagio on Lake Como follows a footpath down to Pescallo, the fishing hamlet that has worked this water for roughly eight hundred years while the rest of the town filled with hotels and gardens. You'll hear about the traditional batee, a wooden fishing boat with canvas hoops against the rain, a style so linked to a scene in Alessandro Manzoni's nineteenth-century novel The Betrothed that boats like it still carry a nickname from the book. Railways and motorboats pushed most working sail off this lake by the early twentieth century. Walk down to the little harbor and listen for the sound the guide opens with.