Lombardy is a region that sits in the far north of Italy. Specifically, right in the centre of the northern border with Switzerland. It's north of Toscana (Tuscany) but does not border it; the less well known Emiglia-Romagna sits between them. (Emilia Romagna's capital, Bologna, it probably better known than the region.) To the north-east is the even less well known Trentino-Alto Adige, and to the east is il Veneto, best known for its capital of Venezia (Venice). To the west is Piemonte (Piedmont), home of the city of Torino (Turin).

Lombardia's main city is Milano (Milan) which is all about money, fashion, money, risotto and money. Not necessarily in that order. If you swap "risotto" for "real estate" it's basically Sydney without a harbour.

But damn the risotto is good there.

Milano is an indisputably Italian city though as Ligabue's song Made In Italy hints, the city probably looks more to the north and the wealth of the Eurozone than south to its Italian siblings. But the further north you go, the more you feel the Germanic influence. It never quite takes over, but it's there, possibly more obvious to non-residents than to residents.

As with everything else in Milano, Lombardia takes its number of provinces to excess. There are 12, and it's only one of two regions in double digits. (Toscana has 10.) Top to bottom and left to right, they are:
[*] Sondrio (SO). The furthest north province, bordering Switzerland. It contains Tirano, which was the starting point for our Bernina Express journey into Svizzera.
[*] Como (CO). Lago Como (Lake Como) is like an inverted Y shape. The province of Como is centred on the town of that name at the base of the left hand leg. It covers all of that leg and a chunk of land to the west before it runs into the Swiss province of Ticino. It also covers some land to the south of Como.
[*] Lecco (LC): This covers the eastern leg of Lago Como, plus the whole of the eastern shore of the lake. A lot of the shots from the 2016 Voyage North gallery were shot here, and Varenna, where we stayed in 2019, is in the province.
[*] Bergamo (BG). This is to the east of Lecco and north east of Milano, and is centred on the town of the same name.
[*] Brescia (BS) East of BG is Brescia, again centred on a town of that name. This runs east to the western shore of Lago di Garda (Lake Garda, the largest in Italia) where it borders the Veneto region. Keep heading east and you'll hit the city of Verona and, later Venezia (Venice).
[*] Varese (VA) Returning to the western side of the region, Varese's western border runs along the coast of Lago Maggiore, with Piemonte (and the town of Stresa) on the far bank. The lower half of Varese's eastern border connects with the southern part of the Como province. The northern part of it borders the Swiss canton of Ticino.
[*] Monza and Brianza (MB). This is only a small province which sits to the due north of the City Of Milano, and which we passed through so quickly on the train from Milano to Tirano that I didn't even realise that we were there. It's important for motor sports aficionados since it is the home of the Monza Formula 1 track. Keep going east and you'll hit Bergamo and Brescia again.
[*] Milan (MI) Which means that we must again return to the west of the region, where the next province down is the Metropolitan City Of Milano itself. A couple of the southernmost provinces an be found to the east of it but let's treat them as their own row.
[*] Pavia (PV) To the west of the region one last time we have Pavia. This is a more agricultural zone, bordering the Piemontese province of Alessandria in the west, and Emilia Romagna in the south.
[*] Lodi (LO) To the east we have the small province of Lodi. Bounded by rivers and with vast amounts of alluvial soil, it grows an abundance of fodder crops, cereals and vegetables.
[*] Cremona (CR). Cremona sits more or less on a shallow angle from north west to south east. It's centred on the city of that name, the birthplace of Antonio Stradivari (aka Antonius Stradivarius, 1644), creator of some of the world's most famous violins.
[*] Mantua (MN) This province juts out to the south east of the region. Since this is another province in the amazingly fertile belt of the country, its abundance of water provides it with a strong agricultural base similar to LO.

In our 2016 trip we had a mere two days in Milano, then two of us took a TGV to Paris, and two of us made our way north through Lombardia and up into Switzerland via Tirano.

In 2019 we returned to explore the lakes districts, staying first at Stresa in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in Piemonte, then a further three nights at Varena in the province of Lecco in Lombardia. In the course of doing so we had to bounce through Milano Centrale on a few occasions but had relatively little time in Milano itself. Since two of our party arrived at Malpensa airport, however, we did spend one night there. (They arrived too late to continue back to Torino, our base, that night.) The two of us who were already in Italia headed to Malpensa to meet them and spent the day in Milano while we awaited them.

Both trips were long anticipated, and over too quickly. The memories of them are starting to recede into the distance and become misty, as most memories are inclined to do. These galleries of photos hold onto the snippets of the relatively small number of days that we spent in Lombardia. Not just the grand edifices but, particularly on the train trip to Tirano, the scenes of everyday life. (Something that I regret not documenting more.)

I strongly recommend viewing any of these photos at their original size.

I used Nuance Dragon Dictate to generate a lot of the captions. That means that there are likely to be some screwy expressions that I somehow missed in the sub-editing. Dragon is far less accurate than it claims to be, but it's still faster than typing.