COMO casts its SPELL

In Northern Italy's Lombardy region, Lake Como has a way of casting an intoxicating spell over visitors, and perhaps the greatest seductress of all is the newest villa to grace her shores, Villa Passalacqua, writes Natasha Dragun.

- Natasha Dragun

There’s a moment as I enter my suite, La Sonnambula lilting from the stereo, when I imagine the clock has been wound back a couple of centuries to a time when musicians composed opera instead of hip-hop, and couples declared love after a flute of prosecco sipped under the spell of a full moon.

My suite’s signature scent is all roses and romance, and it wafts into the balmy night through whitewashed shutters that open to dreamy views of Lake Como, dusted in the reflection of stars. A symphony of dusky pinks, my enormous room is like a shrine to Italian design: think etched Barbini mirrored cabinets, Como silks, original stucco and ceiling carvings. In the bathroom, meanwhile, I discover white-and-rose Dover Aurora marble from the quarries of Louis XIV topping the vanity, hung with etched mirrors beside a luxurious window-side tub and silk taffeta curtains.

You can see how one’s imagination starts to drift soon after checking in to Villa Passalacqua.

History reinvented 

Like so many painters, philosophers, musicians and poets of his time, Count Andrea Lucini Passalacqua found himself seduced by Italy’s prettiest lake back in the late 1700s. With the assistance of Swiss designer Giocondo Albertolli who crafted the interiors, he built the now historic 1787 Passalacqua villa on its banks, and promptly went about entertaining the who’s who in its generous-sized quarters. Among them was composer Vincenzo Bellini, who visited in 1829 and couldn’t bear to leave: he wrote two of his famous operas, Norma and La Sonnambula, in the home’s music room, today Villa Passalacqua’s Bellini Suite.