Sixty Two Photographs of Como and Not One of the Lake

July 10, 2026

I said the camera did the heavy lifting in Como and then showed you none of it. Here it is: one iron bracket, one painted ceiling, a cathedral that took nearly four hundred years, a sleeping dog, and a price tag.

I owe you something. When I wrote about Como I told you the camera had done the heavy lifting, sixty two photographs of doorways and ironwork and stonework, and then I did not show you a single one of them. Here they are.

A vaulted archway painted with faded pink and ochre decoration, a wrought iron lantern hanging from a chain at its centre, and a small balcony with an iron rail set into the wall above — A passageway. Not a church, not a palace. Just the way through to the next street.

This is an alley. Somebody painted the ceiling of an alley, in pinks and ochres, with a proper moulded frame round it, and then hung an iron lantern in the middle on a chain. It is faded to almost nothing now and nobody looks up.

That is the thing about these towns. The effort is not concentrated in the important buildings and then withdrawn. It goes all the way down into the ordinary bits, and nobody thought that was remarkable.

Close view of an ornate wrought iron balcony bracket, its scrolls curling out from the wall, with a street sign and trees out of focus behind — One bracket. Somebody bent that hot and it has held a balcony up ever since.

Same story here. A bracket under a balcony, doing a job that a straight bit of iron would do perfectly well, and instead it curls out and back and finishes in a scroll.

I photograph this stuff constantly and I have finally worked out why. It is a drawn line that somebody made real. Whoever bent that had the whole curve in their head before the metal went in the fire. It is the same decision I make with a brush, except they only got one go at it and it is still there two hundred years later.

The pale stone facade and green domed cupola of Como Cathedral seen from below against a deep blue sky, with the dark cobbles of the piazza in the foreground — Gothic at the bottom, Rococo on top, and about four hundred years in between.

Then the cathedral, which is the best argument I have ever seen for not finishing things quickly.

They started it in 1396, ten years after Milan started theirs. The front and the naves are Gothic, fifteenth century. The bits behind are Renaissance, a hundred years later. And then that green dome on top is late Baroque, designed by Juvarra and not done until 1744, with the work dragging on to 1770.

Three hundred and seventy odd years, and three completely different ideas about what a building should look like, stacked one on the other. By every rule I was taught it should be a disaster. Stand in that square and it is not. It just reads as a thing that was cared about for a very long time by people who kept changing their minds.

A small pale French bulldog asleep flat out across the open threshold of a clothes shop, a red lead trailing behind it, with a rail of dresses and a mannequin in the cool dark of the shop beyond — Right across the doorway. Not beside it. Across it.

And then this one, who has made a decision about the heat and is not open to discussion.

Flat out across the threshold of a dress shop, lead still on, one ear up. Note the placement. Not tucked out of the way, not in the corner. Directly across the door, so every single customer has to step over him. That is a dog who knows exactly how much he is loved.

A large black and white abstract canvas behind glass in a gallery window, poured and dripped ink shapes on a white ground, with a small handwritten card beside it giving the title, technique, size, year and price — Scene di Caccia. Mixed media on canvas, 120 by 100, 2022, twelve hundred euro. That is the whole label.

Last one, in a window on the way back to the station. Big black and white canvas, poured and dripped, all edge and no drawing. Scenes of the Hunt, it says. And next to it, handwritten on a bit of card, the technique, the size, the year and the price. Twelve hundred euro.

No artist name on that card. No statement, no story, no website. Just what it is, how big, and what it costs.

I have been collecting how people sell all trip and I keep coming back to this one. It is either supremely confident or somebody could not be bothered, and I genuinely cannot tell which. What I do know is that I stood there working out the sum, which is more than most gallery walls get out of me.