Don’t start a travel piece with the journey – that’s one of the first things they teach you as a journalist. But, so valuable is the cautionary tale I’m about to impart, I’m going to make an exception: don’t attempt to get to Lake Como on public transport. Well, at least not if you’re lucky enough to be heading to Grand Hotel Tremezzo. Call ahead and ask the hotel to send a car, instead. Don’t, as we did, baulk so hard at the €200 quote from the taxi drivers outside Milan Malpensa that you leap headlong into northern Italy’s road and rail system.

The train to Saronno went off without a hitch. But the second train was delayed, leaving us huddled under an umbrella as Storm Ciarán ravaged swathes of central Europe. At Lago Como, the rain reached apocalyptic levels as we waited outside to buy bus tickets, only to be told that the stop was closed and that we’d need to walk 20 minutes to get to the next one. After dragging our sodden suitcases through cobbled streets, our fingers pruning from dampness, we stood on a packed bus until we reached Tremezzo – more than four hours after leaving Milan. The drive takes about an hour.

You enter Grand Hotel Tremezzo via a lift. So, after our ordeal (although not before the final indignity of being hit by a wave of rainwater from a passing car), zooming up to the Belle Époque foyer felt like ascending to heaven. Heaven is, in this context (and perhaps in all contexts), a sumptuous lobby with parquet flooring, Aubusson carpets and velvet sofas – where receptionists greet you by name having been telephoned ahead by bellboys dressed in wide-brimmed Borsalino hats. They give you a key to your Lake View Deluxe Room, where an ice bucket of champagne awaits.

Said room is cast in a palette of sages and browns, with a gold Baroque headboard above the bed. Silk drapes hang over double-aspect French doors, which open to the lake on one side and the hotel gardens on the other. There is a drowningly deep tub in the verde antico bathroom, where all manner of creams, scents and unguents from Acqua di Como reside on the vanity.

Tremezzo was opened in 1910 to accommodate bourgeois travellers to the region. It’s an 18th-century estate – Lombardy’s answer to the Grand Budapest – painted honeysuckle yellow with accents of orange that pop in stationery, ashtrays, gift ribbons, and the parasols around the WOW (that’s Water on Water) pool, which is situated on a floating pontoon out front. The hotel sits amidst sprawling gardens, which contain penny-filled fountains, hidden belvederes, another (more private) pool, a wood-fired pizzeria, an indoor ‘garden’ (soundproofed for parties), and several promontories over the lake.

Although its heritage is proudly preserved, Tremezzo is improved annually by current owner, Valentina de Santis. She has recently added a ‘lake beach’ (with actual sand) and a new fish restaurant on the pontoon, Da Giacomo al Lago, where we enjoyed fresh crudi, spaghetti alle vongole and white wine until we weren’t sure whether the undulating sensation we were experiencing was a result of the Chardonnay Flora or the water below.

Another recent addition is a salon of sherbet-coloured armchairs that provides an exhibition space for the owner’s family’s collection of silk designs (Como is famed for its silk, with brands including Hermès and Versace sourcing from the nearby city). It is under de Santis’s patronage that Tremezzo’s sister hotel, Villa Passalacqua, a short drive away in Moltrasio, was in 2023 named by the World’s 50 Best organisation as the number one digs in Italy.

The lake was fantastically moody as the storm retreated – an almost violent shade of lapis: the perfect time to go sub terra to Tremezzo’s L’Escale trattoria, which serves rustic fare like cacio e pepe prepared at your table. The candlelit restaurant is the cosy alternative to Tremezzo’s fine dining spot, La Terrazza Gualtiero Marchesi, which is dedicated to the great Lombardian chef and founder of ‘the new cuisine’, which sought to prove that Italian food could be just as refined as French.

By morning, the lake had mellowed, and, over the most extensive breakfast buffet I have ever laid eyes upon (a veritable Willy Wonka’s factory offering everything from pink doughnuts and a chocolate fountain to smoked swordfish and three churns of butter in varying degrees of saltiness), we got what we, and what European nobles on their Grand Tours, came for: a sunny panorama of a shimmering lake, fringed by snow-capped Alps, white-and-ochre villages, and Renaissance palazzi.  

Lake Como is so intrinsically romantic – populated by Riva speedboats and tourists sipping prosecco in garden follies – that you can’t help but indulge in its myth. You think about how Leonardo da Vinci painted here, and Verdi composed La traviata. You imagine Wordsworth, Longfellow and Hesse being inspired by Como. You’re reminded of how Gianni Versace owned a villa in Moltrasio, and that after World War II Churchill stayed in Bellagio (directly across the lake from Tremezzo). Of course, when writing about Lake Como, no journalist is allowed to omit a mention of George and Amal Clooney’s place in nearby Laglio (that’s one rule, at least, I’m happy to observe).

Villa Carlotta, the villa and botanical gardens-turned-museum next door to Tremezzo, is full of beautiful artists’ renderings of Como. Looking at them, and then across the lake through an enormous picture window, it is evident that little has changed in this scene between the visits of Richard Branson this century, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edith Wharton at the start of last century, and all those Milanese silk merchants who made their fortunes here in the centuries before.

Rooms start at £900 +VAT per night, including daily breakfast, grandhoteltremezzo.com

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