29/05/2026
There is a letter, written sometime around the year 100 of the common era, that we sometimes quote to travelers who ask us why we love Lake Como.
It was written by Pliny the Younger, a Roman lawyer, magistrate, and prolific correspondent, who happened to have grown up on the lake and never quite stopped going back.
The letter is addressed to his friend Caninius Rufus, who lived nearby, and in it Pliny describes the two villas he owns on the Como shore.
The first, he writes, sits high on a steep slope above the water. He calls it Tragedia, Tragedy, after the tall, elevated boots worn by actors playing tragic roles on the Greek stage. From its terraces, he says, one looks down upon the whole of the lake and the whole of one's ambitions.
The second sits at the water's edge. He calls it Comedia, Comedy, after the low slippers worn by actors in comic plays. From its windows, he writes, one can fish without leaving one's bed.
He moves between them, he explains to his friend, depending on the state of his mind.
Two thousand years before the modern world invented the word wellness, the most cultivated Romans of their generation were already using Lake Como to change internal registers, to step out of one self and into another.
This understanding of what Como is for has, remarkably, persisted across the centuries. The great villas that line the western shore today, Villa d'Este in Cernobbio, Villa Carlotta near Tremezzo, Villa Serbelloni at Bellagio, Villa del Balbianello on its tiny peninsula at Lenno, Villa Pliniana with its private waterfalls at Torno, were not, originally, built to impress.
They were built by the Milanese aristocracy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as retreats for men exhausted by the world: by court politics, by industry, by the increasing noise of a Milan that, even then, was beginning to feel like too much city.
The gardens were designed to slow the pulse. The terraces were oriented to catch the southerly afternoon light. The boats were kept rigged and ready at the small private docks, so that one could be on the water within minutes of deciding one needed to be.
The composers came. Liszt wrote part of his Années de pèlerinage at Villa Melzi. Verdi spent summers nearby. Stendhal called Como the most beautiful place in the world, and he had been to quite a number of places. Later, Henry James, Hemingway, and, more recently, the long parade of Americans who arrive each summer hoping to see a famous neighbor across the water.
The point of Como, however, has never been the famous neighbors. The point of Como is what the place itself does to a person who arrives there exhausted.
This is why we are particular about how we design it. We will not put our travelers on the speedboat tours past the celebrity villas, a brief, frankly disappointing experience that misunderstands the entire spirit of the lake.
We will put you in a small wooden classic launch with a captain who has been on these waters since he was a boy, in the early morning before the wind picks up, with espresso in a thermos and the lake almost entirely to yourselves.
We will arrange a long private lunch on the terrace of one of the historic villas, the kind of lunch where the wine arrives without being ordered, and where the afternoon, when it comes, is not scheduled to be anywhere in particular.
We will leave the rest of the day deliberately empty.
This, in our experience, is when Como begins to do its actual work.
If your 2026 includes a stretch of slowing down, for an anniversary, a milestone, a return after many years, or simply because you have earned the right to a long quiet afternoon on a terrace, we would be honored to design it.
Ph Credits: Rick Govic | Unsplash
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