Passalacqua

Felice Soave drew the plans for a villa at Moltrasio in 1787 for Count Andrea Lucini Passalacqua, who wanted a house on the water with terraced gardens climbing the hill behind it. Two centuries and several owners later, in June 2022, the De Santis family opened Passalacqua as a hotel of 24 rooms, and within sixteen months it had been voted the best hotel in the world.

History

The villa's most celebrated guest arrived in the 1830s. Vincenzo Bellini stayed at Passalacqua as a guest of the family and worked there on La Sonnambula and Norma; the hotel keeps his memory in the names of its rooms and in a piano in the main salon. In the twentieth century the house passed through private hands and was for a time divided into apartments before the De Santis family, owners of the Grand Hotel Tremezzo across the lake since the 1970s, bought it in 2018. The Tremezzo, opened in 1910, is the grand hotel of the family; Passalacqua was conceived as its private-house counterpart. Paolo De Santis and his daughter Valentina led a four-year restoration that returned the frescoed rooms, the chapel and the gardens to a single estate.

In September 2023 the hotel was named number one on the inaugural World's 50 Best Hotels list.

Architecture and design

The main villa is a neoclassical block of three storeys above the lake, with a double staircase descending through seven terraces of gardens to the water. Inside, the ceilings retain their eighteenth-century frescoes and the restoration added Murano glass, Venetian plaster and furniture collected by the family rather than a designer's scheme. Two further buildings complete the estate: the Palazz, a converted stable block up the hill, and the Casa sul Lago at the shoreline.

Rooms and suites

The 24 rooms and suites are divided between the three houses. Those in the villa are the grandest, with original frescoes and lake-facing windows; the Palazz rooms are more domestic in scale, and the Casa sul Lago rooms open directly onto the water. No two are furnished alike.

Dining

The restaurant serves Italian cooking from the lake and the surrounding valleys, with tables on the terrace in fine weather, and there is a bar in the former chapel of the villa. The gardens hold a vegetable plot that supplies the kitchen.

Wellness

A swimming pool sits on one of the lower terraces with the lake beyond it, and there is a small spa with treatment rooms and a hammam.

Weddings and events

With 24 rooms, the estate lends itself to full buy-outs for weddings and private celebrations, with ceremonies in the gardens or the villa's salons and dinners on the terraces above the lake. The frescoed reception rooms and the Palazz are used for small meetings and family gatherings. The hotel is seasonal, open from spring to autumn.

Location

Moltrasio is a village on the western shore of Lake Como about 8 kilometres north of the city of Como, on the road that continues to Cernobbio and Tremezzo. The hotel has its own boat landing. Como San Giovanni station, with trains to Milan, is about 20 minutes by car, and Milan Malpensa Airport is about an hour. Of the luxury hotels on Lake Como, Passalacqua is the one that stays closest to the feel of a private house rather than a grand hotel.