Bellagio

Bellagio occupies the tip of the promontory that divides the lake into the Como and Lecco branches. From Punta Spartivento, whose name means “wind-divider”, looking north, you see the Como branch to the left, the Lecco branch to the right and, ahead, the upper lake widening towards the Alps, all at once. It is a ten-minute walk from the centre.

The old centre, the Borgo, climbs from the arcaded lakefront by stairways and stepped lanes to Piazza della Chiesa and the Romanesque basilica of San Giacomo, built between the late eleventh and the early twelfth century. Beside the town hall, the small Romanesque church of San Giorgio has its bell tower over the porch that closed the first ring of walls.

That same position makes Bellagio the ferry hub of the central lake. Varenna and Menaggio are a quarter of an hour away, Tremezzo and Villa Carlotta twelve minutes, and the car ferry crosses the lake without the long drive round.

Pliny the Younger, born in Como, describes two of his villas on the lake in a letter, calling them 'Tragedy' and 'Comedy'; tradition places Tragedy on the promontory of Bellagio. In the Middle Ages a castle stood at the top of the promontory. In the twelfth-century wars between Como and Milan the village sided with Milan, until in 1154 Frederick Barbarossa forced it to swear loyalty to Como once more.

In the fourteenth century the Visconti, lords of Milan, had the castle pulled down and made Bellagio the seat of the Captain of the Lake, whose armed boats hunted pirates and smugglers. At the end of the fifteenth century the promontory passed to Marchesino Stanga, a friend of Ludovico il Moro, who built his residence there. In the sixteenth century the fief was bought by the Counts Sfondrati, the family of Pope Gregory XIV, who held it until 1788. Their estate was then inherited by Alessandro Serbelloni.

The park of Villa Serbelloni covers almost the whole promontory above the village, where the castle once stood. It was laid out by Alessandro Serbelloni, owner from 1788, with paths, terraces and woodland looking over both branches of the lake. The villa is not open; the park can be seen only on a guided tour, at set times with limited places, booked in advance.

Villa Melzi, on the shore towards Loppia, was built between 1808 and 1810 for Francesco Melzi d'Eril, vice-president of Napoleon's Italian Republic, to a design by Giocondo Albertolli. Luigi Canonica and Luigi Villoresi laid out the English garden, with lawns running to the water, plane trees and a Moorish pavilion. The Japanese pond was added in the second half of the nineteenth century. The visit takes an hour, almost all on the level. Franz Liszt, who was living in the village in 1837, came here to walk the avenue of plane trees and read Dante.

In the nineteenth century Bellagio became a holiday resort. Around 1825 Abbondio Genazzini's inn on the lakefront was turned into the village's first hotel, and in 1837 Franz Liszt stayed there with Marie d'Agoult. In 1873 the Grand Hotel Bellagio opened in the villa the Frizzoni family had built on the shore.

In the early twentieth century the hotel also bought Villa Serbelloni, on the hill, and took its name: Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni. It kept the villa for more than twenty years. The American Ella Walker, Princess of Thurn and Taxis, then bought it, and in 1959 the villa passed to the Rockefeller Foundation, which hosts scholars and conferences there. Teresio Olivelli was born in Bellagio in 1916; a partisan, he died in the Hersbruck concentration camp in 1945 and was beatified in 2018.

Twenty minutes on foot across the promontory, between vegetable plots and dry-stone walls, bring you down to Pescallo, the fishermen's harbour on the Lecco branch; in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a convent of Benedictine nuns stood here. Southwards, past Villa Melzi, you reach Loppia, with the eleventh-century bell tower of Santa Maria and the stone stairway that once led up to Villa Giulia, the villa Count Pietro Venini completed in 1806. Further along the shore, half an hour from the centre, the hamlet of San Giovanni has a church with an altarpiece by Gaudenzio Ferrari and the Museum of Navigation Instruments.

The bus climbs to Civenna, merged with Bellagio in 2014, and to the Ghisallo pass, where the Madonna venerated in the sanctuary has been the patroness of cyclists since 1949. The highest point of the comune is the summit of Monte San Primo.