GRAND HOTEL TREMEZZO, PASSALACQUA & P. JOHNSON 2023
At some stage in my life I’d love to pack up the family and park on the shores of Lake Como for a spell. It never seems to suffer quite the same rabble of the other Italian touristic centres, and it still very much feels like you are on holiday. Como I think gets painted as effete but deep down it certainly isn’t. Como is homely because it is productive, it has industry, so it has maintained a sense of self in the same way the more forgotten places of Italy have. Its families are mostly native rather than itinerants, and they care for the lake (which you can now safely take a dip in by the way) and their heritage. Some, you get the feeling have never left the valley, which is endearing.
Tamsin my wife was lucky enough to meet a local woman a few years back, a hotelier named Valentina De Santis. Her family have been in the hospitality game for many years. Her parents Paolo and Antonella are long time proprietors, or perhaps guardians is a better word, of the illustrious Grand Hotel Tremezzo on the western ‘waist’ of the lake facing Bellagio. It is a must if you haven’t stayed there before and a great lesson in hospitality, perfectly mastering the tiny sensitive gap that exists between the formal and the informal. In 2018 the De Santis family purchased the semi-renovated Villa Lucini-Passalaqua in Moltrasio (on the ankle of the western leg of the lake), bringing this remarkable building and property back into local hands and renaming it Hotel Passalaqua. Here they have refined and perfected their craft with such aplomb that if there is any affectation, which I don’t believe there is, it is entirely undetectable. To meet the De Santis you can see why this is.
Valentina is an open and warmly smiling mother of two that I felt immediately familiar with. She invited us into Hotel Passalaqua as if it were her home. There was no suggestion it was a privilege to enter what was probably one of Europe’s most desirable homes and now one of Europe’s most superb hotels (maybe the most superb?). Napoleon Bonaparte stayed here when it was home to its original owner Count Andrea Lucini-Passalaqua. Andrea’s heir Count Alessandro was a close friend of composer Vicenzo Bellini who spent enough time there to write not one but two operas during his stays (La sonnambula and Norma). In fact the building is arguably centred around its vast first floor music room, an expression of Andrea’s love for music.
The building was built by the Odescalchi family in the late half of the 1700’s on an estate owned by Pope Innocent XI. In 1787 it changed hands to Count Andrea Lucini-Passalaqua, scion of a Lombardian noble family, who oversaw its expansion. The architect Carlo Felice Soave designed the 30,000sqm three storey building to appear elegant and refined, not overtly fanciful on its exterior. It was a sober, modest and locally respectful facia for the time, and a striking contrast to the elaborate neoclassical feast indoors, put together by artist and decorator Gioncondo Albertolli. Andrea Appiani was commissioned to paint ceiling frescos and other works. The building has survived loved and less loved epochs after the Lucini-Passalaqua tenure including an Estonian Countess Ruby von Sederhoelm and a Hungarian anthropologist amongst others but has ultimately been cordially treasured. The De Santis acquired it almost by chance from American banker Jim Cantwell, accidentally happening upon the property’s auction in 2018. It’s wonderful to think it is fallen back into not just local hands but devoutly caring ones too.
Staying at the hotel you can see it hasn’t been contrived to satisfy ‘the Gram’. There is no pastiche, no signalling and it is free from everything that is expected. This is a home first and foremost and feels like one. It is dignified. The interiors have been dutifully re-engaged by Valentina, the frescos are preserved immaculately, and many features lovingly restored. She used her COVID time resourcefully, painstakingly selecting and commissioning all components from the best Italian suppliers* - from local silk damasks, marbles, elevators and minibars to lighting, tableware, furniture and antiques. Then there are the gardens, which are nothing short of magical. They cascade down onto the lakefront, flanked by Lebanese cedars and deodars. There is a vegetable garden and a orangery-style winter garden with a freshness about it that is just so spirited. The whole damned thing is too hard to explain, it is so spectacular yet real at the same time that it would invoke mysticism in the hardest of heads. It simulates a childhood level of fantasy.
The De Santis family are hospitality experts. Their original venture, the Grand Hotel Tremezzo is a paradigmatic hotel, a classical time freeze, spotless in every way. It was established in 1910 by Enea Gandola who came from Bellagio (in the fork of the lake). Enea travelled extensively with his wife Maria, experiencing the great hotels of Europe, before settling in Tremezzo to establish the Grand Hotel. I should say ‘toured’ rather than travelled. This was the Belle Epoch, the period of the ‘Grand Tour’ where one would acquire art, culture and knowledge, to enlighten oneself. The decadent elite had a thirst for culture but they had a bigger thirst for indulgence - holidays were where it was at. Greta Garbo explained the Grand Hotel Tremezzo as ‘that happy sunny place’. Its elaborate art nouveau interior exists today with only minor augment, and is managed by the De Santis’ with the same rigour Enea Gandola would have expected. There are few institutions like this any more.
I wanted to celebrate the microcosm that is Lake Como and hopefully direct some attention to the De Santis’ institutions, so together we made some beautiful things you can buy. The refined prints and pigments of the swimmers, hats and sarongs reflect the traditional motifs of the famous silk ties produced by Como’s ‘cravattaio’. Note, we didn’t make them in the local silks because silk and water don’t mix unfortunately, but we have been making silk ties in Como for nearly 15 years now. I hope you can enlighten yourselves with a visit one day.
CLICK HERE TO SHOP GRAND HOTEL TREMEZZO AND PASSALACQUA NOW
CLICK HERE TO SHOP GRAND HOTEL TREMEZZO AND PASSALACQUA NOW
