Words: Joseph Bullmore
Lake Como, it probably doesn’t need to be said, is a great deal more Lake than Como. Yes, you can certainly visit that eponymous town, which sits at the bottom of the forked lake, spindly like a Giacometti sculpture at full stretch. It has a handsome train station where the times are mostly accurate, and I seem to remember there’s a funicular full of Americans who think Wes Anderson must have been involved in some way. There’s a little market in the harbour on certain days which sells nuts and olives and German hotdogs. But in general, it is the great departure lounge of the Lake; the passing-through point via which all incoming tourists must flow; the bread course before the moveable feast to the north.
It is a hell of a meal. I love Lake Como in the way that only an Englishman can. The Europeans do lakes properly. They live on them, put restaurants and grand dame hotels around them, build palaces in their green crevices, have chugging ferries that zig-zag across them from tiny port to tiny port. The Lake District is lovely, but in contrast to Annecy or Geneva or Como — especially Como — it’s a bit of a museum of a thing. And if Como is the lakiest of lakes, then Il Sereno is certainly the lakiest of lake hotels on the lakiest of lakes. I appreciate that’s a lot of lakes, but you’ll appreciate that, really, that’s the point.
Il Sereno knows this, deep down and deliberately. Many of the storied hotels here build themselves high and tall and away from the lake — monuments from the 18th or 19th century, interested in symmetry and grandeur, propped up like wedding cakes or movie sets in lemon yellow stone and colourful awnings. But Il Sereno makes the lake very much the thing. Its sleek, Bond-villain infinity pool (and I mean that as a compliment — the baddies always have the best taste) is positioned just a few feet above the blue-grey waters below.
The excellent, excellent, excellent restaurant — Il Sereno al Lago — is sat in a sort of undercroft whose stone archways open out directly onto the waters. If you’re lucky, confident, well-dressed little ducks might wonder over and ask for some focaccia. Every suite and room — every one! — is not simply facing directly onto the lake, but pretty much hovering over it, so when the curtains open in the morning you get the sense not that you are in a fixed structure but on some steady, cubist, brutalist cruise ship, floating on in the calm breezes and towards the misty mountaintops. (There is one suite, below decks, so to speak, which has direct water frontage and a mooring for your boat.)
When Il Sereno opened in 2017, it marked a stark departure from the more ornate, traditional palazzo hotels which spring to mind when “Lake Como” is name-dropped in polite conversation. It must have felt like a gamble to Patricia Urquiloa, the lead designer of the project, to opt for such modernist lines and bold silhouettes, even those softened by local woods and stones from quarries nearby. But it more than works, lending a mineral touch of Japano-Scandi chic that fits Como’s Alpine appeal. It is a wonder, as you approach by boat to begin your stay here and the handsome structure emerges from the haze, that no-one has really tried this sort of thing before.
The food, meanwhile, is equally refreshing in its ambition. There is a menu called — and here I translate, for fear of mispronunciation — ‘Contrasts and Contradictions’, which is ‘fusion’ cuisine (hateful word) done with Italian care and love of ingredients. Emblematic highlights include a swirl of cashew nut cacio e pepe, which introduced a warm, gently oriental, deeply umami texture to the pasta; and what I’d describe as a sort of caprese salad ice cream, with cold, creamy mozzarella and sweet, fruity, perfumy little tomatoes. Michelin-starred and devised by Chef Raffaele Lenzi, the whole thing is playful and surprising: “an experiential journey,” Lenzi says, “where vegetables are the protagonists, in a mix of contrasts of different flavours and cultures.” Protagonist vegetables. You don’t get that at Villa d’Este.
The rooms, as you’d expect, are striking, light-filled, broadly proportioned cabins. The walls don’t have windows — they are windows; fully-retractable sliding doors that open into the big balconies (almost rooms in themselves) and the cooling evening air. Looking out from ours, you could see the chocolate box villages on the shore opposite, along with the mysterious, brooding, beautiful lakeside villas, all sat below the huge, green, forested hills that turn blue in the morning light and golden at twilight. The name means Serene, and the views justify it.
Just below us, a small jetty juts into the lake, with two dinky Riva speed boats bobbing next to it in glossy, cherry wood perfection. They belong to the hotel, and you can use them if you want, and there is no finer pleasure than taking one of these out for a couple of hours on a jaunt around the lake, Persols on your nose and wind in your hair. The fresh spray kicks up when you get up to full whack, but it’s almost more fun idling gently around the bends and undulations of the shoreline, where you can see otherwise-secret homes and tiny, mountainous hamlets from the best possible vantage point. None is more intriguing, however, — more striking, more inviting — than Il Sereno itself. Its great strength is its singularity and self-confidence — a place that is Lake Como to its depths, and yet entirely its own.
Read more about Lake Como’s iconic hotels here.
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