Words: Joseph Bullmore
Photography: Joseph Bullmore
You can read all about the history of Villa d’Este while you have breakfast on the terrace, if you like. Or you can look up and see it for yourself instead. All that patrician grandeur and Renaissance prettiness and high Italian pomp! Once upon a time, there were nuns down in this corner of Lake Como. Then came cardinals, then Milanese counts, then prima ballerinas, then European princesses and British royalty, and then the jet set and the golden age movie stars, and then the Clooneys. It’s a patchy chronology, I know — but perhaps we can put that down to last night’s negronis, if you don’t mind. Two-by-two and tinkling like a baby grand, they were ferried over by white-coated waiters with good hair and enviable posture. Grazie. Prego. The younger brothers that I never had…
Down on the terrace it’s sunny and warm, but not too hot. This is because someone clever thought to put a substantial lake just next door. Then someone even cleverer decided to construct a sizeable pool in the substantial lake, which means you can engage in a sort of meta-swim just before lunch, and burn twice the calories in the process (potentially).
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