Villa d'Este

Villa d'Este stands at Cernobbio, on the western shore of Lake Como, a cardinal's summer residence built in 1568 by Pellegrino Pellegrini for Tolomeo Gallio and a hotel since 1873. The house is really two buildings joined by the same grounds: the Cardinal's Building, the original block, with 124 rooms, the lobby, the Conciergerie and the grandest suites on its piano nobile; and the Queen's Pavilion, added in 1856 and named for Caroline of Brunswick, its 27 rooms in pastel tones behind a red trompe-l'œil façade. Between them the two hold 151 rooms and suites. Around them runs a 10-hectare park laid out across 4 centuries of taste — Baroque, Renaissance and Romantic gardens in one grounds, part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani network, with a mosaic-walled nymphaeum, chestnut and magnolia trees, and a fountain of Hercules. Milan Malpensa is 60 kilometres away, about 48 minutes by road, and the house keeps its own private helipad and dock for a more direct arrival.

By evening the light off the lake reaches every room differently, depending on which of the two buildings it sits in and how high. Classic Room and Executive Room open onto the Cardinal's Building's own inner courtyard or its gardens, 30 to 50 square metres in warm or pastel tones. Deluxe Room and Deluxe Superior Room turn to face Lake Como directly, the second of the two on the upper floors with a private terrace of its own onto it. The 3 named junior suites run 45 to 62 square metres: Junior Suite Exclusive over the gardens or, in some rooms, partly onto the lake; Junior Suite Lake View and Junior Suite Lake View Deluxe both facing the water, the second with a balcony on every room without exception. Suite, at 65 to 75 square metres, and Executive Suite, at 70, sit higher again, the second with two private balconies of its own, one off the bedroom and one off the sitting room. Presidential Suite and Cardinal Suite close the ladder: two suites of 80 to 95 square metres on the first floor of the Cardinal Building, and, beside them, Cardinal Suite is the only room with a terrace over the water, named for the cardinal who built the house. 4 more houses stand inside the same park, let out as their own villas rather than rooms: Mosaic House is a single 90-square-metre suite beside the mosaic nymphaeum, Villa Malakoff a 3-floor house of 300 square metres built in 1860, Villa Cima a lakefront villa of 650 square metres built in 1815 for Caroline of Brunswick herself, and Villa Garrovo the largest at 700 square metres and 6 bedrooms, restored in 2015.