Loppia

This guide to Loppia, a lakeside hamlet on Lake Como, explains why its houses were built upside down by ordinary logic, with boats and drying nets on the ground floor and family life stacked above. It introduces the gondola lariana and the Lucie, the working boats that made this arrangement necessary, and traces the hamlet's roots back to Roman times and its tenth century church, Santa Maria di Loppia. You'll hear how the church later passed to the Gerli family and what happened to its old cloister when the lakeside path was cut through. Stand at the old dock, where the nets were once spread to dry.