Named “world’s best hotel” in 2023 by the World’s 50 Best ranking, Villa Passalacqua holds, beneath its eighteenth-century frescoes, traces of Napoleon, Winston Churchill and the composer Vincenzo Bellini.
The villa’s origins date back to the second half of the eighteenth century, when the Odescalchi family had it built on the remains of an ancient monastery. In 1787 the property was purchased by count Andrea Lucini Passalacqua, who entrusted its expansion to the architect Felice Soave, while the decoration of the salons was carried out by Giocondo Albertolli; on the ceilings visitors can still admire frescoes by the great neoclassical painter Andrea Appiani, including a Madonna and Child dated 1790. It was the heir Giambattista Passalacqua, who returned to settle here after a life of travel, who enriched the villa’s library and turned it into a meeting point for artists and intellectuals: regular guests included the composer Vincenzo Bellini and the poet Carlo Porta, while Napoleon Bonaparte himself, during a brief visit, was struck by the building’s grandeur.
The park, with terraces descending to the water’s edge, an Italian garden with basins and water features, and centuries-old olive, cypress and cedar trees, remains one of the most scenic on the Lario. After 1885, when it was bought by baroness Ruby von Sederhoelm, the villa went through a long period of decline, interrupted only in 1970 by the restoration commissioned by the writer Oscar Kiss Maerth and continued in 2007 under the ownership of the American entrepreneur Jim Cantwell.
In 2022 the De Santis family, already owners of the Grand Hotel Tremezzo, turned Villa Passalacqua into a luxury hotel with just 24 suites spread across the historic villa, the former stable and the Casa al Lago: a project that, just a year after opening, earned it the title of the world’s best hotel, firmly establishing this corner of Moltrasio among the most exclusive destinations on Lake Como.