Blevio
A villa shore rather than a village: a string of hamlets on the steep eastern bank immediately beyond Como, close enough to the city to be useful and separate enough to forget it.
Eastern shore Como branch Province of Como
Blevio is the first shore you reach going north out of Como on the eastern bank, and it is a shore rather than a settlement. There is no square, no high street and no obvious middle. What there is instead is a sequence of hamlets, each a few houses, a chapel and a set of steps, repeated along a bank steep enough that they never quite join up.
That structure is not an accident of poverty. It is what happens when a shoreline is bought house by house by people who wanted a garden on the water and privacy from their neighbours, which is broadly what happened here in the nineteenth century, when singers, composers and impresarios from the Milanese opera world took houses along this bank.
The result is a place with an unusual relationship to Como. The city is close enough that its hospitals, schools, station and shops are ordinary parts of daily life, yet the bank itself is quiet, green and vertical enough to feel entirely detached from it. Buyers come here for that contradiction, and it is the thing to test on a viewing rather than take on trust.
At a glance
- Province
- Como
- Position
- Eastern bank of the Como branch, immediately north of Como city
- Settlement pattern
- No single centre; a series of hamlets linked by stepped paths
- Aspect
- Faces west across to Cernobbio. The ridge immediately behind delays the morning sun, and the fold of the hill takes the afternoon light off some hamlets earlier than others
- Railway station
- None. The two Como stations are the nearest
01The character of the place
The defining physical fact is gradient. The bank rises hard out of the water, so the hamlets sit on shelves and are connected by stepped paths and mule tracks rather than by pavements. Two houses a short distance apart on the map can have no sensible route between them except the road above or the water below.
The villa stock gives the shore its texture: pale stucco, tall shuttered windows, iron balconies, and gardens laid out in terraces down to a landing stage. Many were built or remodelled in the nineteenth century, and the planting of cypress, magnolia, camellia and wisteria is as much a part of the inheritance as the houses.
There is very little communal life in the way a village has it, and it is honest to say so. What Blevio has instead is a shore of households who mostly know each other, a chapel or two, and Como at the end of the road for everything else.
Light here is worked out shelf by shelf. The ridge behind is immediate and high, so the sun arrives on this bank later than it does across the water, and the folds of the hill take the afternoon light off some hamlets noticeably earlier than others. It is the single variable we would check on a specific terrace before advising on a specific house.
Buyers who want a villa and a garden to the water
This shore has more of that stock, in a small compass, than anywhere else this close to the city.
People who will actually use Como
Station, hospital, schools, shops and an airport road. Blevio makes a lake house workable as a main residence rather than a summer one.
Owners who do not want village obligations
There is no centre to be part of. If you want to be left alone with a garden and a boat, that is what this bank offers.
Buyers with a project
Nineteenth-century villas on steep sites, frequently with more house than has been used for decades. Ambitious restoration is the normal condition here.
02The property market
Buying in Blevio
Blevio trades as a villa market, not a village one. The units are large, the plots are steep and terraced, and a high proportion of the stock is nineteenth-century with the structural and regulatory obligations that implies. There are far fewer small houses and apartments here than in a comparable stretch of shore, which means the market is thin in number and heavy in value, and it moves slowly.
Two things set price. The first is frontage: a garden that reaches the water with a landing stage or boathouse on it is a fundamentally different asset from one that stops at the road, and the difference is not incremental. The second is the road itself. The shore road runs through the middle of the comune, and a villa split by it, with a garden on the far side, is a common arrangement here that buyers should look at carefully rather than dismiss or ignore.
The honest drawback is the proximity that is also the main attraction. This is a commuter shore as well as a villa shore: the road carries traffic in and out of Como and it can be busy at the ends of the day and heavy on summer weekends. A house set well above or well below it barely notices; a house on it notices constantly. Anyone buying here on the strength of a quiet Sunday viewing in April should return on a Friday evening in July before committing.
Nineteenth-century villa with garden to the water
The category the shore is known for: terraced grounds, a landing stage, and rooms scaled for entertaining. Rarely offered publicly.
Villa divided by the shore road
House on one side, garden and frontage on the other, usually with a right of passage. Common here, and priced differently from an undivided plot.
Hamlet house on a shelf
Smaller, older, reached by steps, frequently with a terrace and no parking. The attainable end of a very expensive shore.
Contemporary house above the road
Built or rebuilt on the upper slope for the view and the parking, and generally with better light than the water's edge below it.
03Getting there, and getting about
By road
Blevio is on the eastern lakeside road immediately north of Como, and it is the last shore on this side that can genuinely be described as close to the city. Getting to a motorway, a station or an airport road from here is simpler than from anywhere else on the eastern bank.
The same road is the shore's principal nuisance. It is narrow, it carries commuter traffic to and from Como, and in season it carries everyone heading north as well. Parking is a house-by-house matter: many villas have it, many hamlet houses have none, and there is no municipal answer to fall back on.
By water
The shore is a line of private landing stages, and for a house with frontage a boat is the natural way to leave. Como's basin is a very short run to the south and the western shore is directly opposite.
There is no significant public harbour here, and public boat services are not the way this shore is served. Owners run their own boats, and an existing mooring or boathouse attached to a property should be treated as one of the most valuable things in the sale, because it cannot be replicated.
By rail
Blevio has no railway station, but it has the most workable answer of any village on this shore: the two stations in Como are close, with direct services to Milan, and the last stretch is a short road transfer.
04Eating
Blevio is not somewhere you go out to eat in the way you do in a village with a centre. There are a small number of places along the shore, several of them attached to hotels or to the water, and they are pleasant, seasonal and few.
In practice, owners here eat in Como. The city is close, it has range and depth that no lakeside village can match, and it stays open out of season when the shore does not. That is one of the genuine advantages of buying at this end of the branch, and it is worth planning for rather than resisting.
We keep our own list of where to eat on this shore and in the city for members, with the name and the person to ask for. It is not published, because the places worth knowing about are small enough that publishing them would spoil them.
05Staying
There is a small amount of accommodation on the shore, some of it in converted villas and pitched at a level consistent with the addresses around it. It is limited in number and largely seasonal.
For visitors and for buyers spending real time here, Como itself is the practical base, or a private house on the shore. We generally place people in a house: it is the only way to test the thing that matters most about Blevio, which is what the road and the light are like at different hours of the day.
06Worth doing
Walk the stepped paths between the hamlets
The old routes up and across the bank, still the only way to get between some houses. They explain the shape of the comune better than a map.
Look at the villa gardens from the water
The nineteenth-century terracing on this shore reads properly only from a boat, which is how it was designed to be seen.
Como, on an ordinary evening
A short run south: a functioning city with a cathedral, a theatre, proper shops and restaurants that are open in November.
The short crossing to Cernobbio
Directly opposite, and a completely different atmosphere. Owners on this bank use both shores as a matter of routine.
07Looking after a house here
Blevio is the easiest of the eastern-shore villages to service, and it is the main practical argument for buying here. Como's trade base is on the doorstep, which means gardeners, housekeepers, restorers, boatyards and surveyors are all within a short run rather than an expedition.
The complication is the stock rather than the labour. Large nineteenth-century villas on steep sites bring heritage consent, retaining-wall maintenance, long garden runs and lakeside structures that need periodic and expensive attention. Any figure for the annual cost of running a house here should be built from a survey of the specific property, not from a rule of thumb; we would treat anyone quoting a per-square-metre number without seeing the terraces as guessing.
Blevio: questions we are asked
Is Blevio a village?
Not in the usual sense. It is a comune made up of small hamlets along a steep shore, without a centre, a high street or a square.
This is either the attraction or the objection, and buyers divide sharply. If you want to walk out of your door to a bar and a bakery, look at Torno or across the water at Cernobbio. If you want a house, a garden and a boat, with a city rather than a village behind it, Blevio is arranged exactly for that.
How close is Blevio to Como?
It begins where Como ends, on the eastern bank, and the city's stations, hospital and shops are a short road run away.
We deliberately do not publish a journey time, because the lakeside road varies enormously with the season and the hour. The useful way to think about it is that Blevio is the only stretch of this shore where a lake house can reasonably serve as a main residence with a working life attached to it.
Is the shore road a problem?
It can be. It carries commuter traffic to and from Como and gets heavy in season, and the effect on a particular house depends entirely on how far it sits above or below the road.
This is the honest drawback of the shore. A villa with its garden running down from well above the road, or one screened below it, is quiet; a house whose windows face it is not. Visit at the end of a weekday and again on a summer weekend before deciding, and ask specifically about the arrangement where a garden is on the opposite side of the road from the house.
Why are there so many nineteenth-century villas at Blevio?
The shore was favoured in the nineteenth century by figures from the Milanese opera world, and several of the houses along it date from that period.
Milan is close, the bank faces a good stretch of water, and the land was available in large enough parcels for gardens. That inheritance is why the stock here skews to substantial houses with terraced grounds and landing stages, and why so much of it is subject to heritage constraints today.
Can I get a mooring at Blevio?
Practically speaking, only by buying a house that already has one. There is no significant public harbour on this shore.
Landing stages and boathouses here are attached to individual properties and date from a period when they could still be built. They are among the most valuable elements of any sale on this bank, and they are the reason two apparently similar villas can be priced very differently.
Does Blevio get enough sun?
It varies more than most buyers expect, hamlet by hamlet, because the ridge behind is immediate and the hillside folds.
In summer nobody notices. In winter the difference between two houses a few hundred metres apart can be substantial, and it is not something a photograph or a spring viewing will reveal. We would look at any specific property on a clear December morning and again in mid-afternoon before forming a view, and we do not publish sun hours we have not measured ourselves.
This page is editorial information based on our own work on the lake, not a valuation or a survey. Prices and availability move; treat any figure as an indication and take professional advice before committing.
Sources
- Comune di Blevio, Hamlet boundaries, parking provision and constraints on works to listed villas.
- Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio (Como), Heritage listing status of individual villas, to be confirmed per property before describing any renovation scope.
Como Private in Blevio
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