Como Funicular

The numbers that describe the ride

The line runs 1,084 metres and rises 496 metres, which gives it a maximum gradient of 55 per cent. Two cars work it in counterbalance, so one comes down as the other goes up, and there are two intermediate request stops for the people who live on the slope. The journey takes 7 minutes. Those figures are as recorded in the Wikipedia entry on the Como to Brunate funicular, read in Q3 2026, and they are the only technical description of the service published in English anywhere we could find.

The carriage floor is stepped and the seats face across the slope, so the view opens behind you rather than in front. Sit at the downhill end, facing back, and the town, the piers and the whole southern basin unroll below the window.

1894, 1911, 1981: a working railway, not a heritage ride

The line was built in 1893 and 1894 and opened in 1894, worked at first by steam, electrified in 1911 and transferred to Regione Lombardia in 1981. That history is on the one page of the old official site that still renders, funicolarecomo.it/centro.php. It matters for expectation management: this is public transport for a hillside village, not an attraction with a visitor centre.

There is a window, a platform and a carriage.

There is no boat to Brunate

Brunate has no landing stage. It does not appear in the Navigazione Lago di Como stop list at all, which puts it in a small group of places on this lake that the boats simply do not serve. The consequence is worth stating plainly, because a lot of itineraries assume everything on this shoreline is reachable by water: to get to Brunate you take this funicular, you drive the hairpin road, or you walk up.

There is no fourth option. The getting around page sets out which towns each service actually calls at.

Read the table as the current sheet, because it is the only one of the three in circulation that prints the date it took effect. If the window charges something else, the window is right and the website is old, including us.

Groups and residents pay differently

Groups of at least 10 pay $3.73 (€3.20) a single and $7.46 (€6.40) return. Larger parties of at least 20 pay $3.50 (€3.00) and $6.99 (€6.00), and school groups of at least 20, up to high school age, pay $2.33 (€2.00) and $4.66 (€4.00). Residents of Como and Brunate pay $2.21 (€1.90) a single or $22.10 (€19.00) for eleven of them, on an annual card that costs $5.83 (€5.00) to issue.

The rate that matters most to a visiting family is the free one: children up to 4 years old travel free, and the reduced fare then runs to the twelfth birthday. The carer of a disabled passenger also travels free, but only on production of a document attesting that assistance is needed, which is worth carrying rather than explaining at the window.

Three sheets, and the one that is in force

Three fare documents for this one line are on the web at the same time, and they do not agree. The test that settles it is the date each one prints on its face.

The operator publishes the current sheet: a PDF headed Tariffe dal 01/09/2026, reached from the Tariffe panel of funicolarecomo.it, giving $4.31 (€3.70) single and $8.62 (€7.40) return, with the line at the foot stating that the fares are set by the Agenzia per il Trasporto Pubblico Locale del bacino di Como, Lecco e Varese. ASF raised its own Como urban fares on the same date, 1 September 2026.

ATM, which operates the service, still serves an undated tariff PDF from its own funicular page giving €3.60 and €7.20. Those are the fares the dated sheet replaced, and because the ATM document carries no date at all it is impossible to tell that from the file itself. Several guides and one GetYourGuide listing quote this pair.

The third is the sheet this guide used until in Q3 2026: a PDF headed Tariffe dall'1.12.2022, whose internal file name is A4 Tariffe in vigore dal 1 dicembre 2022, giving €3.30 and €6.10. It is two revisions old and still online.

Budget the current figures, take cash or a card for a little more than any of them, and treat the window as final.

What the two superseded sheets still say

Both older documents are still downloadable, and both are cheaper, which is why their figures keep turning up in guides. Read them as history rather than as a price.

ATM's undated PDF, reached from its own Funicolare Como-Brunate page, prints €3.60 single and €7.20 return, €2.40 and €4.80 up to 12 years old, ten singles for €32.50, a seven-day card at €11 and a monthly at €39. Its resident line is €1.90 a single and €18.50 for eleven. Every one of those figures is a few cents under the sheet in force.

The 2022 sheet, headed Tariffe dall'1.12.2022, is the one to be most careful with. Its reduced fares are €2.20 single and €3.50 return up to 12 years old, and it makes children free by height rather than by age: under 110 cm travels free, whatever the birthday says. Its resident fares are €1.80 a single and €17.50 for the 11-trip carnet, on the same €5 annual travel card. It charges bicycles €3.20 with a maximum of three per carriage, small luggage and small animals €1.30, and a large animal or a bag occupying a seat €3.30. Neither ATM nor the current sheet republishes the height rule, the three-bicycle limit or the €1.30 line: the sheet in force carries one €3.60 parcel fare instead, and makes children free to their fourth birthday. If someone at the window quotes you a rule from this list, it is coming off a document that two revisions have replaced.

Here is what we read, and what each source turned out to be.

ATM, which has operated the line under concession since July 2005, publishes a one-page Orari sheet from its Funicolare Como-Brunate page. It reads TUTTI I GIORNI, every day, 06:00 to 00:00: departures every 15 minutes from 06:00 to 07:00, every 12 minutes from 07:00 to 09:00, then every 15 minutes from 09:00 until the last car at midnight, with cars leaving Como and Brunate at the same moment. The same page states that the funicular is accessible to passengers travelling in a wheelchair, and that Io Viaggio tickets and passes are valid on it.

The funicular's own domain, funicolarecomo.it, is an old frameset whose news items are dated 2023 and earlier. Its English timetable pages, named orari01 to orari04, are not the funicular timetable at all: they are the schedule of the C39 Brunate bus, and they still carry the sentence warning that on 25 December 2007 and 1 January 2008 the line will not carry out the service. Its Tariffe panel, by contrast, is current.

ASF Autolinee sells a combined funicular and Como urban season ticket, and runs the bus link from Brunate to the Rifugio CAO, but its own funicular page carries no timetable and no fare table. So the operator's own website and the concession-holder's page between them publish no operating hours at all: the one authority that does is ATM.

What nobody publishes is a maintenance closure. A single-track counterbalanced plant does come out of service for periodic overhaul, and no date for that appears on any of the three sites.

• atm.it, Funicolare Como-Brunate: the Orari PDF, every day 06:00 to 00:00, and the current-looking tariff PDF that is in fact superseded
• funicolarecomo.it Tariffe panel: the sheet in force, headed Tariffe dal 01/09/2026
• Its English orari pages: the C39 bus timetable, still warning about 25 December 2007
• asfautolinee.it funicular page: no fares, no timetable, but the combined urban season ticket
• Maintenance closures: not stated by anybody

What a traveller actually does about it

Three things, in order of how much trouble they save.

First, trust the pattern rather than a clock time: every 12 to 15 minutes, every day, 06:00 to midnight. Nothing is timed and nothing sells out, so a missed car costs a quarter of an hour at worst.

Second, glance at the departure board at Piazza Alcide De Gasperi 4 on your way past, because it is the one source that will show a closure for overhaul if there is one. That costs a two-minute detour on your first morning in Como.

Third, if your day cannot absorb any uncertainty, buy the problem away: the boat tour with the funicular ticket included puts the timing on the operator, and the guided walk does the same. That is a $70 solution to a $4.31 fare, so it only makes sense if the boat is something you wanted anyway.

The priority access you do not need

The GetYourGuide listing for the boat and funicular bundle sells priority access to the funicular. On a service running every 12 to 15 minutes on untimed tickets with no reservation system, priority access can only mean moving up a queue for a carriage that will be back in a quarter of an hour. It is not a slot, and there is nothing to skip in the sense that a timed museum ticket skips something.

The same listing quotes the funicular half at €7.20 return, which was the fare before 1 September 2026 and is now 20 cents light. Buy that bundle for the boat and the convenience, not for the priority and not for the price.

The variable is the ridge, not the railway. Brunate's viewpoints start at the upper station and the walking gets serious quickly, so decide before you buy whether you are riding up for a look or riding up to walk.

The lower station is at Piazza Alcide De Gasperi 4, 22100 Como, at the eastern end of the lakefront where the promenade runs out. From Como Cathedral it is about eleven minutes on foot, from the piers at Piazza Cavour about nine, and from the Tempio Voltiano about fifteen along the water. From Como Nord Lago station it is roughly ten minutes and from Como San Giovanni about twenty, downhill on the way there and uphill on the way back, which is worth knowing at the end of a long day.

The telephone number on the operator's own material is 02 48036789 and the address for enquiries is info@funicolarecomo.it. Neither is a booking line, because there is nothing to book.

Driving to the station is the option to avoid. Parking in Como is metered per meter rather than city-wide: the comune runs seven different tariff structures across 219 machines, and the premium central and lakefront meters charge €3.00 an hour around the clock. The cheap answer is the Lazzago park-and-ride at Via Colombo 30 on the southern edge of town at €1.00 a day, then a bus in. The driving and parking page has the rest, and getting around covers arriving by boat or train instead.

• Lower station: Piazza Alcide De Gasperi 4, at the east end of the Como lakefront
• Eleven minutes on foot from the Cathedral, nine from the piers
• Enquiries: 02 48036789, info@funicolarecomo.it; nothing is bookable
• Parking: not here. Lazzago park-and-ride, Via Colombo 30, €1.00 a day

A bicycle, a pet, a pushchair or any other parcel travels for $4.19 (€3.60), which is the one fare on the sheet that costs more than a child's ticket, and a single with a bicycle is sold as one item at $8.51 (€7.30). The sheet caps a parcel at 50 by 30 by 25 centimetres, so a large suitcase is not a parcel in its terms.

Guide dogs travel free, and the sheet adds one rule that no other venue on this lake imposes: every dog must wear a muzzle. The carer of a disabled passenger travels free on production of a document certifying that assistance is needed. ATM's own funicular page states that the funicular is accessible to passengers travelling in a wheelchair, which is the only step-free statement published for it; the operator site's own Barriere architettoniche page did not render when we read it, so nothing more detailed than that one line exists.

• Bicycle, pet, pushchair or parcel: $4.19 (€3.60)
• A single plus a bicycle, sold together: $8.51 (€7.30)
• Parcels are capped at 50 by 30 by 25 centimetres
• Guide dogs: free. Every other dog must wear a muzzle, which the sheet states outright
• Carer of a disabled passenger: free, with a document attesting the need
• Wheelchair access: stated on ATM's funicular page, with no detail beyond that line

- The fares changed on 1 September 2026 and most of the web has not noticed. The sheet in force gives €3.70 single and €7.40 return; ATM's own undated PDF still shows the €3.60 and €7.20 it replaced [funicolarecomo.it, Tariffe dal 01/09/2026; atm.it funicular tariff PDF, read in Q3 2026]. - The timetable is published by ATM, not by the funicular. The operator's own English orari pages describe the C39 Brunate bus and still warn about 25 December 2007 [funicolarecomo.it/inglese/oraricentro.htm]. - A bicycle costs more than a child's ticket, $4.19 (€3.60) against $2.91 (€2.50), and a single plus a bicycle is sold as one $8.51 (€7.30) item [Tariffe dal 01/09/2026]. - Children travel free only to their fourth birthday, and the reduced fare then runs to the twelfth [Tariffe dal 01/09/2026]. - ASF sells a season ticket that covers the funicular and every urban bus in Como together, at $66.40 (€57.00) a month, which is the only integrated product on this hillside [asfautolinee.it and Tariffe dal 01/09/2026].

Put it in the afternoon. The morning belongs to the lakefront and the centre, where the Cathedral opens its tourist route at 10:30 and the Tempio Voltiano opens at 10:00, and the light on the southern basin is behind you until midday. Ride up at three or four, take the ridge for an hour, come down as the town lights come on, which the last car at midnight makes easy.

If you are on the lake for one day in total and arriving from Milan, this is the cheapest way to see the shape of the place before you commit to a boat: seven minutes and $4.31 (€3.70) buys the view that explains why the lake has three arms. The one-day plan uses it that way. If you have longer, treat it as the Como half of a day whose other half is the water, and take the tickets index for everything else on the lake that charges to get in. The whole Lake Como guide starts from the homepage.