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It's been one of those weeks, the kind Milan is so adept at providing. The only city in Italy where business always comes before pleasure, Milan takes its role as the commercial and financial heart of the country very seriously indeed. From ready-to-wear fashion to electro-engineering, from publishing to petrochemicals, Milan is a city where the deal always takes precedence, where the Berlusconis, de Benedettis and Raul Gardinis choose to flex their considerable corporate muscles and where the day isn't over until the last Rampanti, or Yuppie, shuts down his personal computer. If you're not on holiday the chances are you'll only ever see the Viscontis' rose-white Duomo from a speeding taxi, and da Vinci's Cenacolo at Santa Maria delle Grazie will be nothing more than a fond hope.

By the time Friday comes round, you'll have one thought in mind. How to get out of the city and which direction to take. As in most things, the best bet is to follow the Milanese example and head north where the vast Lombard plain starts to crumple and rise towards the icy ramparts of the Alps. For amongst these forested folds, close enough to be visible from the roof of Visconti's Duomo, are concealed the real jewels of Lombardy's crown, the lakes of Maggiore, Como, and Garda.

Lake Garda is the furthest lake from Milan but easily reached along the aptly named Autostrada Serenissima. It is also the largest of the three lakes, a club-shaped stretch of rinse-blue water edged with groves of olive, palm, lemon and cypress, its northern skyline jagged with distant Dolomite peaks. It is here, on Garda's southern shore, on the needle-thin promontory of Sirmione where the Roman poet Catullus soothed a broken heart, that you will find one of the Italian lakelands' finest hotels.

The Villa Cortine may not have been around as long as some of its competitors - it was converted into a hotel some 40 years ago and recently extended - but its reputation is as gilded as the halo of a Renaissance saint. Originally built as the summer residence of an Austrian general, this neo-classical villa, with its soaring frescoed ceilings and opulent furnishings, is set in magnificent gardens, its secluded gravelled pathways leading past statues and fountains to the water's edge. Despite Garda's immense popularity - in the summer months the Gardesana highway which circles the lake can be choked with traffic - the Villa Cortine is never less than a haven of peace and pampered tranquility, serenely isolated at the end of the Sirmione peninsular.

On a far smaller scale than the Villa Cortine's 53 rooms and brace of suites, but no less exclusive, are the four rooms and three suites of the sixteenth-century Locando San Vigilio on the eastern shore of Lake Garda. Unpretentious, easily missed at the end of a tree-lined lane and, like its neighbour in Sirmione, set on a suitably remote headland, the San Vigilio is the kind of place you go when you want to ensure all the soothing pleasures and privacy of a home without all the tiresome formalities of a hotel. Which is probably why San Vigilio is a special favourite of their Royal Highnesses King Juan Carlos I of Spain and the Prince of Wales, whose occasional visits effectively close the hotel to all but the royal party.

Lake Maggiore, shared between Italy and Switzerland and winding its way between Lombardy and neighbouring Piedmont, is the second largest of the Italian lakes. It is the most English of the lakes, with a kind of Victorian and Edwardian gentility strangely at odds with the throttling of Ducatti 500s and speeding aliscafi (hydrofoils). It is an atmosphere that persists, most particularly, in much of Maggiore's belle epoque accommodation; don't be surprised, for instance, when you find toast and marmalade and a pot of tea on your breakfast table, and copies of yesterday's London Times on the terrace.

Along its western shore, at Stresa and Baveno particularly, there are many fine hotels including, of course, the truly sumptuous Grand Hotel des Iles Borromzes. This hotel was used by Hemingway as a refuge for his hero Frederick Henry in A Farewell to Arms and is named after Maggiore's famed Borromean Islands, which rise out of the Bay of Pallanzo with an almost fairy-tale magnificence. It is on one of these, Isola dei Pescatori, that you will find the family-run Verbano, a small but utterly charming hotel with fading reddish walls, ancient green shutters and one of the most romantic dining terraces in the world. The Verbano may not be as grand as the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées, but its glorious setting, looking out across the lake at the 17th-century palazzo of the Borromeo Family on neighbouring Isola Bella, easily makes up for any shortfall. Time your visit for a full moon and you will never want to leave.

If Garda and Maggiore are the largest and longest of the Italian Lakes, then Como is the most romantic, its distant mountains and wooded promontories, its deep sapphire waters and forests of camellia, rhododendron, azalea and magnolia inspiring the likes of Verdi, Rossini, Bellini and a clutch of visiting English Romantics. To Stendhal Como was "the most beautiful place in the world", to Wordsworth it was "a treasure that the earth keeps to itself", while for Shelley the lake "exceeded anything I ever beheld in beauty". Nowadays, in high season, they might revise those opinions for Como's proximity to Milan has made it something of a Milanese Riviera, but there are still times, either side of those hectic summer months, when Como is nothing less than enchanting.

On Como's western shore, Cernobbio's stately Villa d'Este, built in 1557 by Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio, is undoubtedly the best known and most prestigious address on the lake. It is, however, the smaller (though no less imposing) Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni at Bellagio that seems effortlessly to steal its big brother's thunder. With its intricately painted and vaulted ceilings, its gilded furnishings, glittering chandeliers, Oriental rugs and sweeping marble staircase, the Villa Serbelloni is little short of a masterpiece. At ease in these frescoed, palatial public rooms or wandering through the Villa's delightful gardens, blessedly undisturbed by Como's increasing popularity, there is a sense that nothing here has changed since those first Romantics came to stay - and that nothing ever will.

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