Hotel of the Week: This Design-Forward Stay Brings Cool Modernism to the Shores of Lake Como
The Lake Como Edition offers sumptuous accommodations, including the Cadenabbia suite, which features breathtaking balcony views
The shores of Lake Como in northern Italy are fringed by delicious 18th-century villas, transformed into fantastical hotels, and fabulous 19th-century purpose-built establishments. So the visitor with money to spare is rather spoilt for choice. But The Lake Como Edition, which opened quietly last year, has rather extended the options, bringing a fresh kind of mid-century modernism to the neighborhood.
In line with design values set by Ian Schrager, when he launched the Edition concept in the early 2010s, Lake Como Edition offers a clean and minimal kind of luxury. And though Schrager has departed the brand, his spirit lives on, not least in the faux-fur throws guests will find strewn across every bed of its 148 rooms. For Schrager, this was an homage to his stylish mother, who would walk into a room and casually cast her fur coat down on the nearest available piece of furniture. Here it epitomizes Lake Como Edition’s casual elegance.
The Lake Como Edition is in Cadenabbia, about 20 minutes drive up the western shore of the lake from the city of Como. It’s a real village, with a little supermarket, a pizzeria for locals, and a tobacconist located up the hill, while the other way is the beautifully preserved Villa Carlotta, packed with three centuries of paintings.
However, what really defines any stay along Lake Como is the views, and those from The Edition win hands down. Guests can see the village of Bellagio clinging to the hills on the other shore from the balcony of the 1,615-square-foot Cadenabbia suite, which runs along the entire front of the building, with its two sitting rooms, dining room, and bedroom furnished in light woods and contemporary Italian furniture. Next to it is the phenomenal Villa Melzi, with its acres of lush botanical gardens. “We have a handful of boats always available to guests, so you can pop across the lake,” says the hotel’s cultural director, Clea Irving. “And next year we’ll have in-house craft. Just wait, they’ll be something special.”
The Edition started life as the London in 1830, shapeshifting into the Grand Hotel Britannia a few decades later. Both names make clear just what catnip this place was to both the posh and poetic British. Byron and Mary Shelley were regular visitors. The building has good bones, which the respected Shanghai-based architects Neri and Hu have excavated from its various do-ups to create an interior that focuses on strong materials rather than fancy passementerie and decoration. The floors are in handsome pale polished stone that flows into a paving design by the Italian 20th-century hero Carlo Scarpa, of irregular white marble oblongs set in a grey cement. Chandeliers are 1950s-style clusters of milk glass balls rather than Venetian drops
Walls in the huge lobby/games room are rose-pink plaster, with a bar carved from grey marble where twists on classic Como cocktails are served, including the house special, Dolce Vita, a gin-based citrusy drink.
In the Edition’s serious restaurant, Cetino, where the Argentine superstar Mauro Colagreco (his Mirazur in the South of France has three Michelin stars) offers a dazzling tasting menu including a thinly-sliced veal dish that looks like chocolate cake, Neri and Hu have lined the room with deep pink terracotta walls, and long slender arched windows that feel like a Di Chirico painting. The first floor terrace restaurant, Renzo, has fresh air and fabulous views, works from breakfast to a very late dinner, and with its abundant greenery and cool young staff, it feels like fun.
The spa, meanwhile, is a world of deep green ceramic tiles where a series of sublime pools and showers help with the longevity treatments, which come in a lengthy menu. But best of all, its treatment rooms have windows that look out onto a baroque church.
As with some other Lake Como hotels, you have to cross the road to access the pool—but it is absolutely worth the walk. It is built into a pontoon that bobs in the lake, and to lie on the sunbed is like dozing on a gently rocking boat. From here, guests can hop onto a paddleboard—the hotel has just received an order from the exceptional Canadian company Beau Lake, which makes handmade cherry wood boards and decorates them with a bespoke bronze decal by Milanese-based designer Conie Valless. (She only leaves her studio when she’s required for modeling duties by her friends at Bottega Veneta.)
“It’s a small gesture, but I like the way Conie and Beau Lake have brought together two very different worlds,” says Irving. By next season (the hotel will close on October 31 for the winter), there will also be a second pool acquired from the Commune—a perfectly preserved 1932 lido that begs for a period Chanel swimsuit.
It’s early days at the Edition on Lake Como, but this stunning resort definitely has staying power that will make it one to visit again and again.