be cool

Outside the summer months, Lake Como hums with a slower, more local rhythm. Now travelers re getting wise to the appeal of the legendary Italian vacation spot in all seasons

- Lee Marshall

The view from the village of Cernobbio, on the west coast of Como, during the early morning hours 78

it's a cloudless December day on Lake Como, the kind that would make anyone want to bottle up the blue and keep it as a cure for rainy Mondays. I'm on board Lord Byron-the unromantic hydrofoil ferry, not the Romantic poet-with skipper Giorgio Cantaluppi, and the only thing moving faster than us is a cormorant cresting the ripples in the direction of George Clooney's villa, its wings skimming the water.

We remain gloriously alone when we stop by the picturesque bridge and waterfall of Nesso, where, come summer, a flotilla of tourist boats will face off against an army of selfie sticks. The waterfall is sublime, but so is the sun warming my back as I turn to the north. Somewhere over there, beyond those snow-dusted peaks on the border between Italy and Switzerland, people are skiing. Me, I'm wondering if the hotel pool is still open.

When resort towns such as Cannes and San Remo began attracting visitors from the colder climes in the second half of the 19th century, they were seen as wintertime destinations only. Not so with Lake Como. The great villas built around its shores from the 16th century onward were intimately linked to the summer ritual known as villeggiatura. Like the Palladian villas of Veneto, these were places that urban aristocrats could decamp to, generally around mid-June, with a platoon of servants, lapdogs, and candelabra in tow.