Passalacqua

Winter

The house that stays open

In winter, Grand Hotel Tremezzo closes until March 12, 2027, and says that its sister down the shore stays open. That sister is Passalacqua, a hotel in a villa of 1787 at Moltrasio, on the west shore of Lake Como. Come then, and ask for the Villa.

Passalacqua’s own site lists a program for the cold season: truffle menus, an ice rink, Christmas, and a gala dinner on New Year’s Eve. Ask for the dates of each when you book.

For a weekend from Milan on the same shore, read Villa d’Este, in Cernobbio. Passalacqua is the one to keep for the winter.

The Villa

Ask for the lake side

By the hotel’s count, Passalacqua has twenty-four rooms in three houses between the hillside and the water, and twelve of them are in the Villa. That is the house to sleep in.

Ask for a room in the Villa with a lake view. The hotel lists it at about 540 square feet. If the budget runs further, it also lists two named suites: Suite Norma, 1,300 square feet, and Suite Bellini, 2,700.

Name the lake side when you book. It is the one request that matters.

1831

A house built around a music room

The hotel’s history page tells it this way. The Milanese architect Carlo Felice Soave drew the Villa at the end of the eighteenth century for Count Andrea Lucini-Passalacqua, and laid it out around a music room. The owners give 1787 as the house’s birthday.

In 1831, the house says, Vincenzo Bellini stayed here as the guest of Count Alessandro, his friend and patron, and wrote La Sonnambula during the visit. The music room has been restored. Winston Churchill, the house adds, came later.

By the same account, the De Santis family, who own Grand Hotel Tremezzo, bought the villa in 2018, spent three years on it and opened it as a hotel in June 2022. In 2026 The World’s 50 Best Hotels ranked it fifth and gave it its Best Boutique Hotel award.

The house says Bellini wrote an opera here. Ask for a room on the lake side.

The Palazz and the Casa al Lago

Two other houses

The hotel puts the other twelve rooms in two houses: eight in the Palazz, four in the Casa al Lago. The second one’s name says where it stands: at the lake.

If the Villa is full on your dates, ask for the Casa al Lago. Four rooms in one house means the fewest neighbors on the property.

The garden

Down to the water

From the upper terraces, the garden opens below you in layers. Cedars and tall cypresses. Hedges clipped into blocks and domes. A pool ringed with white parasols, each one fringed at the edge. A round stone basin where a single jet of water rises over the lily pads.

Past the trees there is only the lake, and on the right the yellow and ochre houses of Moltrasio climbing the slope under a stone bell tower. Walk it terrace by terrace, before breakfast.

Arrival

By boat from Como

From Milan Malpensa airport, the drive is 36.7 miles, about 54 minutes without traffic. That is the fast way in.

The slower way is the public boat from Como to the landing at Moltrasio. On the autumn timetable, one run leaves Como at 7:33 a.m. and docks at 7:59. The winter timetable runs from October 5 to March 20: check it the week you travel, and see the village first the way the lake shows it, from the water.