Room with a View
italy
Room with a View Room 223, Villa d’Este (Cernobbio, Italy) There are 152 rooms; doubles start at $673. Room 223, a suite, starts at $1,293 (39-031-3481).
go to condenasttraveler .com/rwav for a slide show of 25 years of “room with a view.”
talk about well-heeled: The spotlight never dims at the Villa d’Este, on the western shore of Lake Como, where the rich and beautiful have long reveled. But before Clooney made the lago his playground, before Garbo and Dietrich dropped by for a spell, this fabled palace was the summer home of a sixteenth-century cardinal during the Great Italian Wars and, in the early nineteenth century, of a queen consort in exile. Much of the old-world grandeur remains: the unobtrusive service, the sense of calm (no paparazzi allowed), the vast perfumed gardens that Edith Wharton so loved, and of course the panoramic lake views peeping through the curtains in your eastward-facing room. To get a bit closer to the action, you might try finding a seat on the lakeside terrace, beneath the 500-year-old plane tree. Better yet, sip a glass of chilled limoncello by the pool that floats atop the lake itself—it would be the perfect homage to the many hedonists who have come here before you.
These silk brocade curtains came from nearby Como, Italy’s silk capital, where more than 23,000 Comaschi craft fabrics for the likes of Chanel and Hermès.
Photograph by david drebin
The wishboneshaped Lake Como is 30 miles long, and its beauty has been praised by Shelley, Wordsworth, and Longfellow—in verse, naturally.
134 CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER October 2013
CondeNastTRAVELER.COM
Room with a View Room 223, Villa d’Este (Cernobbio, Italy) There are 152 rooms; doubles start at $673. Room 223, a suite, starts at $1,293 (39-031-3481).
go to condenasttraveler .com/rwav for a slide show of 25 years of “room with a view.”
talk about well-heeled: The spotlight never dims at the Villa d’Este, on the western shore of Lake Como, where the rich and beautiful have long reveled. But before Clooney made the lago his playground, before Garbo and Dietrich dropped by for a spell, this fabled palace was the summer home of a sixteenth-century cardinal during the Great Italian Wars and, in the early nineteenth century, of a queen consort in exile. Much of the old-world grandeur remains: the unobtrusive service, the sense of calm (no paparazzi allowed), the vast perfumed gardens that Edith Wharton so loved, and of course the panoramic lake views peeping through the curtains in your eastward-facing room. To get a bit closer to the action, you might try finding a seat on the lakeside terrace, beneath the 500-year-old plane tree. Better yet, sip a glass of chilled limoncello by the pool that floats atop the lake itself—it would be the perfect homage to the many hedonists who have come here before you.
These silk brocade curtains came from nearby Como, Italy’s silk capital, where more than 23,000 Comaschi craft fabrics for the likes of Chanel and Hermès.
Photograph by david drebin
The wishboneshaped Lake Como is 30 miles long, and its beauty has been praised by Shelley, Wordsworth, and Longfellow—in verse, naturally.
134 CONDÉ NAST TRAVELER October 2013
CondeNastTRAVELER.COM
