Passalacqua was just named the best hotel in Europe. It stays open into January, when the lake goes quiet.
You already know one version of Lake Como. Hydrangeas, striped umbrellas, long blue afternoons, the boat to Bellagio packed with day-trippers. It’s lovely. It’s also busy, and it’s only half the story.
The other half starts in November.
The ferries thin out. The light goes low and gold across the water, then silver, and by five it’s dark. Mist settles over the mountains above Moltrasio and hangs around until mid-morning. The visitors leave, and the villages belong to the people who live there again.
That’s the Como Passalacqua has to itself this winter.
On September 15 in Paris, the villa was named the best hotel in Europe at The World’s 50 Best Hotels. It came fifth in the world and won Best Boutique Hotel for the third year in a row. In 2023 it was number one. Good to know, but what matters this winter is simpler: it’s open. Grand Hotel Tremezzo, its sister hotel up the lake, closes on November 2. Passalacqua keeps going until its last night on January 2, and its twenty-four rooms are some of the only lit windows on this stretch of shore.
Viviana Varese runs the kitchen, and autumn is her season. White truffle from Alba arrives in October. On mild days lunch is still served on the terrace, and Como gets plenty of those well into December. On Thursday nights in November and December, dinner moves down to the wine cellar. The kitchen is open twenty-two hours a day, and guests are welcome to wander in, watch the pasta being made and try some.
An eighteenth-century stone tunnel runs beneath the terraced gardens, from the basement of the palazzo down toward the lake. The spa is built into it.
The sauna and a marble steam room sit in two vaulted grottos cut from Moltrasio stone, and there’s a hall of columns to rest in afterward. In the old greenhouse is a heated pool, eighteen metres long and lined in marble mosaic, with the Italian garden and the lake beyond the glass. Ask for the Beautiful Balance Ritual, which moves between hot and cold using Seed to Skin, an organic line from Tuscany. On a cold December afternoon, this is where you’ll want to be.
The gym is out in the olive grove, and the clay tennis court sits on the lowest terrace, right at the water’s edge. You can spend a morning cooking with Viviana, or arranging flowers with Daniela, who does every arrangement in the house. Como is twenty minutes away and Milan about an hour, but most days you won’t feel like going anywhere.
By late November, things pick up again. There’s a Thanksgiving dinner, dinner on Christmas Eve and a long lunch on Christmas Day. Viviana’s cooking class turns to pan di zenzero, Italian gingerbread. And on New Year’s Eve there’s a cenone, the long traditional Italian dinner that carries everyone through to midnight.
