Journal

The Como Journal

Written for people who own here, or are about to. Long where it needs to be, specific where it can be, and honest about what it does not know.

24 pieces Published irregularly

A village seen from the water on approach

Boats 9 minutes

Lake Como Makes More Sense From the Water

The drive, the parking, the village you can see but cannot reach: everything that seems awkward about this lake stops being awkward the moment you stop using the road. The lake was laid out to be approached from the other direction.

A historic residence set within terraced gardens above Tremezzina

Property

Waterfront or View? The Lake Como Decision Nobody Argues About Properly

Buyers treat height above the water as a compromise on the real thing. It is not a compromise. It is a different property, with a different view, a different day and a different set of costs. For most people it is the better house.

A hallway prepared ahead of an owner's arrival

Ownership

The People You Need When You Own a House Here

Finding somebody to work on a house on this lake is easy. Knowing which of them to trust with it while you are in another country for ten months of the year is the whole problem, and it is not solved by credentials.

Wooded slopes falling to the water on the northern reach

Places

The Lake at Seven

The lake keeps different hours from the people who come to look at it. Between six and nine it is a working place, and it is the part of the day the rest of the day covers up.

01Property and Ownership

For people deciding what to buy, and for the ones who already did.

The lake seen from inside a shuttered room

Ownership 10 minutes

A House in February

What actually happens to a stone house on this lake in the four months nobody photographs, and why the owners who come in the worst month make the soundest decisions in the spring.

12 minutes

Buying Property on Lake Como as a Foreign Resident

The legal sequence is set out in our guide for foreign buyers. This is the human one: the two years it takes, the family you are really negotiating with, and the room where it finally happens.

12 minutes

What It Really Costs to Own a Villa on Lake Como

Our guide sets out the line items. This is what the first three years actually feel like from the inside: the order the bills arrive in, the conversations that set the number, and the economies that cost the most.

7 minutes

The Case for Cernobbio

Almost everybody chooses this lake by looking at photographs of the middle of it. The first basin answers a different question: not where the lake is at its most beautiful, but where you could keep a life.

7 minutes

The Case for Tremezzina

The great gardens are on this shore because the lake goes wide here and the mountains stand back. That piece of geography is the entire argument for owning on it, and it is also the source of every objection to doing so.

8 minutes

The Lake Road Problem

Buyers choose a house on this lake by its view, and then spend the next twenty years organising their lives around a road they never looked at.

02Boats and Water

The lake as it was meant to be approached.

Boats 12 minutes

The Riva Owner's Guide to Lake Como

A classic mahogany runabout is the most photographed object on this lake and the least understood: a boat that asks for a covered berth, a varnish schedule and an early start, and repays all three.

7 minutes

Why the Riva Still Belongs on This Lake

The boat is not a beautiful object that happens to have ended up here. Its proportions are an answer to a particular kind of water, which is why it looks correct on a deep alpine lake and slightly misjudged everywhere else.

03Places and Life

Villages, seasons, and the difference between visiting and knowing.

Painted faades in the older part of Bellagio

Places 9 minutes

The Quiet Side of Bellagio

The most photographed village on Lake Como is also the one people most often see wrongly, because they arrive at two in the afternoon and leave at five.

11 minutes

The People Who Keep the Lake Working

Behind every villa on this shore is a small number of people whose working year runs in the opposite direction to everybody else's. There are fewer of them each decade.

10 minutes

The Light on the Western Shore

A lake that runs north to south has only two aspects, and they are not equal, which is why the villages opposite each other across a mile of water live entirely different days.

8 minutes

Bellagio or Varenna: Two Ways to Live on Lake Como

They face each other across a mile of water and are compared endlessly by people spending an afternoon in one of them. For anyone staying months or buying a house, the differences that matter are almost none of the ones usually listed.

7 minutes

The Lake After Everyone Leaves

The season here does not taper off, it stops. What is left is a different landscape with different light, different weather and a fraction of the population, which most owners have never once seen.

04Architecture and Design

Why these houses look the way they do, and how to avoid spoiling one.

Architecture 13 minutes

Inside the World of Lake Como's Historic Villas

Two thousand years of building the same house in the same place, and why the plan of a villa here has barely changed since a Roman lawyer described his two of them in a letter.

7 minutes

Renovating a Lake Como Villa Without Ruining What Made You Buy It

Almost nothing on this lake is ruined by bad taste. These houses are damaged by improvements that are individually reasonable, taken one at a time, by owners who love the building.

8 minutes

Why Lake Como Villas Look the Way They Do

A villa on this lake has two faces that barely acknowledge each other, and almost everything about the building is a consequence of which face it is on: the loggia, the raised floor, the shutters, the colour, the roof.

05Food and Culture

The table, the hours, and Italian life carrying on around you.

A table set under a parasol at the water's edge

Food 11 minutes

The Journal is the reporting. The guides are the manual, longer, drier, and kept up to date.

The Complete Guide to Lake ComoThe shape of the lake, the light on each shore, what changes with the season, and which village answers which question.

Where to Buy on Lake ComoNot a ranking of villages, but the seven things that actually decide where on this lake you should be looking.

The Cost of Owning a VillaThe standing annual cost of a lake house is decided less by its size than by its garden, its water frontage and whether anybody is living in it. Almost nobody budgets for the last of those.

Lake Como by BoatThe lake was laid out to be travelled on the water, and it still works better that way, provided you understand the wind, the timetable and where you are actually allowed to land.

Where to Eat on Lake ComoEating well on this lake is less about knowing names than about knowing the pattern: how far from the ferry quay to walk, when the kitchens close, and what the lake itself actually produces.

Milan to Lake ComoThree airports, two useful railheads, one slow shore road and a last leg that is very often best done on the water.

Correspondence

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The Como Journal

Lake Como Makes More Sense From the Water

Waterfront or View? The Lake Como Decision Nobody Argues About Properly

The People You Need When You Own a House Here

The Lake at Seven

01Property and Ownership

A House in February

Buying Property on Lake Como as a Foreign Resident

What It Really Costs to Own a Villa on Lake Como

The Case for Cernobbio

The Case for Tremezzina

The Lake Road Problem

02Boats and Water

The Riva Owner's Guide to Lake Como

Why the Riva Still Belongs on This Lake

03Places and Life

The Quiet Side of Bellagio

The People Who Keep the Lake Working

The Light on the Western Shore

Bellagio or Varenna: Two Ways to Live on Lake Como

The Lake After Everyone Leaves

04Architecture and Design

Inside the World of Lake Como's Historic Villas

Renovating a Lake Como Villa Without Ruining What Made You Buy It

Why Lake Como Villas Look the Way They Do

05Food and Culture

Where to Lunch by Boat on Lake Como

The Long Lunch Still Matters Here

After You've Done Lake Como

Why People Keep Coming Back

Something youwould like written?