BY THE WATER

Villa Almana

Cernobbio - Italy

Fashion shows once filled this hillside garden above Lake Como. Now there’s an infinity pool where the runway used to be — same view, better seats.

Adults Only

Garden

Pool

EV Charger

Honesty Bar

Promenade

THE SETTING

Villa Almana is a boutique bed & breakfast on the hillside above Cernobbio, on Lake Como’s western shore — a ten-minute drive from the lake and about fifty minutes from Milan. Built in 1973 for a noble Italian family who made their fortune in Como’s silk trade, the villa once hosted fashion shows, family celebrations, and the kind of Italian aperitivo evenings the era was known for. Cernobbio grew up around the same industry, and its Art Nouveau Villa Bernasconi museum still traces that silk story a short walk from the lakefront.

Nastya and Aleksandr took on the villa, determined to keep its seventies bones, not erase them, mixing the original character with contemporary materials throughout a full renovation. The result reads less like a period piece and more like a villa that simply never stopped being lived in.

THE ROOMS

Six individually designed rooms and one top-floor apartment, all furnished by Italian artisans and finished with the same warm, curved-edge sensibility the decade was known for. The Grand Suite Lake View is the one to angle for: 45 square metres, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a private terrace that turns breakfast into something closer to a ritual. The Junior Suite and Double Room Lake View share the same view at a smaller scale, while three further rooms look out over the garden or the mountains behind the villa — quieter, but no less considered.

For longer stays, or two couples travelling together, the Deluxe Apartment takes over the whole top floor: 100 square metres, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a kitchen and living room that both open onto the lake. Every room shares the same details throughout — Grown Alchemist bath products, king-size down bedding, air conditioning, and furniture that looks chosen once and never needs replacing.

THE FOOD

Breakfast runs as a buffet — fresh pastries, pancakes, local cheese and fruit — with an à la carte option for anyone who wants something made to order, served on the terrace whenever the weather allows, with the lake spread out below.

There’s no restaurant on site beyond breakfast, but Cernobbio’s lakefront, ten minutes down the hill, is dense with places to eat, and the team can point guests toward the ones actually worth the walk.

THE STAY

The infinity pool is the reason most people find Villa Almana in the first place — five by ten metres, cut into the hillside garden among olive trees and flowering plants, with Lake Como laid out beneath it and barely another building in view. A terrace nearby is built for the golden hour: a glass of Italian wine as the sun drops behind the mountains on the far shore.

It’s a small enough property that the welcome tends to feel personal, not programmed — the kind of place where the same person checking you in is also the one setting out breakfast the next morning. Private parking, air-conditioned rooms throughout, and a genuinely quiet setting round out what is, in practice, a simple formula done well.

AROUND VILLA ALMANA

Cernobbio’s lakefront is a ten-minute walk downhill from the villa, anchored by Piazza Risorgimento and a run of cafés along the water. Villa d’Este, a sixteenth-century estate turned legendary hotel since 1873, sits right in town and is worth a stroll through its gardens even without staying there; Villa Erba, the lakeside exhibition venue nearby, hosts the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este classic car show each spring, one of the more glamorous dates on the Lake Como calendar. For something quieter, the Giardino della Valle is a small community garden tucked along a stream in the town centre.

Como’s old town and cathedral are about fifteen minutes away by car, with the Lido di Cernobbio and the beaches around neighbouring Moltrasio both a short drive for anyone who’d rather swim in the lake than the pool. Milan and Malpensa Airport are each roughly fifty minutes by road; the train from Milan Central to Como takes about forty-five minutes, with a short taxi ride on from there.

THE OWNERS

Aleksandr, Nastya and Matteo run Villa Almana as a family, and it shows in details a larger hotel would likely skip — Nastya greeting arrivals personally, the same small team handling breakfast, housekeeping and check-in. Restoring a fifty-year-old villa without losing what made it interesting in the first place is a harder job than building something new, and keeping the seventies design instead of smoothing it into something more generically luxurious was clearly a deliberate choice.