Lago di Varese is the quiet one. The big lakes, Maggiore and Lugano, grab the postcards and the coach tours, while this shallow, reedy sheet of water just west of Varese gets on with being pretty in a modest way. Off its western shore, a few hundred metres out from Biandronno, floats a tiny wooded island called Isolino Virginia, and that speck of land is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the Alpine world.
People were living here on timber platforms in the Neolithic, some seven thousand years ago, and kept coming back for millennia into the Bronze Age. That long sequence is why the island sits on the UNESCO list of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. The island once belonged to the Ponti family, who named it after a daughter, and today a small museum tells the story. In season a little boat crosses from the Biandronno shore, so check the timetable before you plan your day around it, because outside summer weekends it may not run.
The road around the lake is a pleasant loop of perhaps thirty kilometres, mostly flat and rarely fast, threading through Gavirate, Biandronno, Bodio and Calcinate with the water appearing between villas and reed beds. It is a road for an unhurried morning. The real riding begins when you point the front wheel uphill: the Campo dei Fiori massif rises right behind Gavirate and Varese, and the climbs to the Sacro Monte di Varese and beyond twist through chestnut forest with proper hairpins and views back over five or six lakes on a clear day. Weekends bring cyclists in great numbers, so ride the climbs with patience.
Gavirate is your practical base. It is a lively little town with fuel, cafés and a lakeside promenade, and it claims the invention of the brutti ma buoni, the lumpy hazelnut and meringue biscuits whose name means ugly but good. Buy a bag; they survive a tank bag surprisingly well. The lake itself has had a long battle with pollution and swimming is not what it was decades ago, but the cycle path that rings it is lovely for a short walk after parking. Late afternoon is the hour to be here, when the Monte Rosa glows pink far to the west and the water goes perfectly still around the island.