Tremezzina
Not a village but a shoreline: four former comuni strung along the western bank, holding the greatest concentration of gardens and grand villas on the lake.
Western shore Centro Lago Province of Como
Tremezzina is easiest to understand as a stretch of coast rather than as a place with a middle. It came into being administratively in 2014, when Lenno, Mezzegra, Ossuccio and Tremezzo were merged into a single comune, and the four still behave as four: each has its own church, its own harbour or landing, its own gradient and its own set of houses, and a buyer who says they are looking in Tremezzina has narrowed nothing down at all.
What binds the four together is aspect. The shore runs roughly north-east to south-west and faces across the widest part of the lake towards the Bellagio promontory, which means the sun comes round onto the houses in the early afternoon and stays with them until it drops behind the ridge at their backs. The evening light on the water here is not a marketing phrase but a structural fact of the geography, and it is the single reason this shoreline was built the way it was.
The consequence is a density of great gardens found nowhere else on the lake. Villa Carlotta's terraces at Tremezzo, the promontory garden at Villa del Balbianello above Lenno, and the long run of private grounds between them were all planted on the same warm, sheltered, east-facing slope. The camellias and azaleas that give the Riviera delle Azalee its name are there because the microclimate lets them be, not because someone decided the coast needed a name.
At a glance
- Province
- Como
- Comune formed
- 2014, by the merger of Lenno, Mezzegra, Ossuccio and Tremezzo
- Aspect
- East-facing across the centre of the lake towards Bellagio; long afternoon and evening light
- Railway station
- None. The nearest is Varenna-Esino-Perledo, reached by ferry
01The character of the place
Tremezzo is the formal end of it. This is where the shoreline is grandest and most continuous, where the hotel terraces and the great gardens sit side by side, and where the lake is at its most composed, a long horizontal frontage with the Grigne rising directly opposite. It is also the busiest stretch, because Villa Carlotta draws visitors and the road runs immediately behind the gardens.
Lenno is different in kind. It has an actual bay, sheltered and shallow, with a small harbour and a piazza that functions as a village square in a way nothing at Tremezzo quite does; and it has the Dosso d'Avedo, the wooded promontory carrying Villa del Balbianello, which is owned by FAI, the Italian national trust, and reached most properly from the water. The Lenno bay is the most sociable and the most usable part of the comune.
Ossuccio and Mezzegra go up rather than along. Behind the shore the ground climbs quickly into olive terracing and older hamlets, with the sacred mount above Ossuccio and its chapels stepping up the hillside, and Isola Comacina, the only island on Lake Como, lying just offshore. These upper hamlets are where the comune stops being about villas and starts being about stone houses, terraces and views over the whole basin.
Through all four runs the Greenway del Lago di Como, the walking route that threads the old lanes, gardens and shoreline paths between the villages. It is the clearest way to understand how the four fit together, and it is also, for a buyer, the quickest way to establish which parts of this coast are quiet and which are not.
Buyers whose first requirement is a garden
This is the shoreline where the great gardens are, and where mature planting on a warm east-facing slope comes with the house rather than needing thirty years.
Owners who want afternoon and evening light
The aspect is the asset. If you take your lunch and your drink outside, this coast does something Bellagio and the eastern shore structurally cannot.
People arriving and living by boat
Lenno's bay, the water approach to the Balbianello promontory and the run across to Bellagio make this a shoreline that only works properly from the water.
Not for buyers who want a town
There is no single centre and winter is quiet. For shops, schools and a piazza that stays open, Menaggio or Cernobbio are the honest answer.
02The property market
Buying in Tremezzina
The defining feature of this market is that there is no single market. Four former comuni means four distinct pools of stock with different frontages, different gradients and different buyers, and prices along the coast vary far more by micro-position than they do by village name. A house at Tremezzo on the water with the road behind it, a house on the Lenno bay with a mooring, and a stone house on the terraces above Mezzegra are three different assets that happen to share a postcode.
Supply at the top of the market is structurally constrained in a way that is worth understanding before you begin. The most desirable frontage was built out in the nineteenth century by families who wanted gardens running down to the water, and those estates are large, listed in many cases, and slow to move; when one does come available the process is private and the buyer pool is small but deep. Below that level there is a good deal more activity: smaller villas, garden apartments carved out of larger houses, terrace houses above the road. This is where most transactions in the comune actually happen.
What is genuinely scarce is separation from the shore road. The Regina road runs the length of this coast and it is the main artery of the western shore, which means a great many otherwise excellent houses have traffic between the garden and the water. The properties that command the strongest prices are the ones that resolve it, either set below the road with the garden running unbroken to a landing stage, or high enough above it that the road is neither seen nor heard. Everything else on this coast is priced against that distinction, and a buyer who understands it will read the market far more quickly than one who is looking at photographs.
Nineteenth-century garden villa
The signature building of this shore: terraced grounds, mature planting, often a landing stage. Frequently listed, and slow-moving when it moves at all.
House on the Lenno bay
Smaller, sheltered, close to the harbour and the piazza. The most usable position in the comune and the one with genuine year-round life around it.
Terrace house above the Regina road
Olive terracing, parking, and the whole crossing in front of you. Quieter, cooler and a different budget entirely from the frontage below.
Hamlet or stone house at Ossuccio or Mezzegra
Older, higher, thick-walled, with a view down onto Isola Comacina. Renovation stock as often as not, and the value end of this coast.
03Getting there, and getting about
By road
The Regina road along the western shore is the only through route, and it carries everything: residents, delivery traffic, coaches to Villa Carlotta and the summer flow towards the top of the lake. From Milan and the motorway the approach is the long run up the western bank through Argegno, and in July and August the last stretch can take considerably longer than the map allows for.
Locally, the road is the thing to solve rather than the thing to use. Access to the older villas is frequently through gates directly off it, parking on the shore side is limited and often awkward, and turning across the traffic into a private entrance in August is its own small discipline. Houses above the road usually have proper garaging; houses on it frequently do not.
By water
The passenger boats call along this shore and the car ferry runs from Cadenabbia, at the northern end of the comune, across to Bellagio and Varenna. Between the ferry and the fast services, this coast is well connected to the centre of the lake without a car ever being involved.
With your own boat the shoreline changes character entirely. The Lenno bay is sheltered enough to be usable in most conditions, the approach to the Balbianello promontory from the water is the way that villa was designed to be seen, Isola Comacina lies a few minutes off Ossuccio, and Bellagio is a short crossing away. Landing stages and boathouses here are old, protected, and impossible to create now, which is precisely why the houses that have them are valued as they are.
By rail
There is no railway station in Tremezzina and no line anywhere on the western shore. The rail approach is to Varenna-Esino-Perledo on the eastern side, on the MilanSondrio line, and then across by ferry to Cadenabbia or Bellagio. It is a change that is straightforward with luggage on a weekday and less so on an August Saturday.
04Eating
Eating on this coast follows the shoreline rather than a centre. There are hotel and villa terraces at Tremezzo that are formal and seasonal, a cluster of places around the Lenno bay and its harbour that are more relaxed and stay open into the evening, and a scattering of trattorie on the terraces above the road where the cooking is Comasco and the clientele is local.
The pattern that matters is seasonal rather than geographic. A good deal of what opens here opens in March and closes in November, and by January the choice on this shore has narrowed considerably. Anyone intending to use a house through the winter should know that before buying, and should count Menaggio, a short run north, as part of their genuine range.
Because the whole coast reads from the water, lunch here is a boat decision, and you go to the table that suits the day and the wind rather than the one nearest the house. We keep a short standing list for members covering this shore and the crossing to Bellagio, with the number and the person to ask for at each; it is not published, since the places on it are small and the list only works while it stays quiet.
05Staying
Tremezzo carries most of the comune's hotel accommodation, and it is grand in the nineteenth-century lakeside manner: long terraces, formal gardens and a view across at the promontory. Around Lenno and Ossuccio the scale drops sharply to small hotels, converted houses and rooms above the harbour, and the difference in temperament between the two is more pronounced than the short distance suggests.
For stays of more than a few nights we place people in private houses more often here than anywhere else on the lake, and the reason is the gardens. Much of what makes this coast worth being on happens outside, on a terrace at five in the afternoon, in a boat at the bottom of the garden, on a stretch of lawn under the camellias. A hotel room, however handsome, gives you the view without the use of it.
06Worth doing
Villa Carlotta
The terraced botanical gardens at Tremezzo, at their most extraordinary when the azaleas and rhododendrons come out in spring. Seasonal opening, so check before going.
Villa del Balbianello
The FAI-owned villa on the Dosso d'Avedo promontory at Lenno. Arrive by water if you can; the walk in is fine but the approach from the lake is the one it was built for.
Isola Comacina
The lake's only island, lying off Ossuccio, with the remains of its early churches. A short crossing and an afternoon that feels much further from the road than it is.
The Greenway del Lago di Como
The walking route linking the four villages through old lanes, gardens and shoreline. The most efficient way to work out which part of this coast you actually want.
07Looking after a house here
The trades that matter most on this shore are the garden trades, and they are unusually good here for the obvious reason: this coast has employed gardeners continuously for two centuries, and the people who look after the great gardens also look after the small ones. Anyone buying a house with mature planting should budget for that properly and engage someone before the first spring rather than after it.
Building work is a different matter. A high proportion of the villa stock is listed or sits within landscape constraint, the Regina road complicates deliveries and scaffolding along the whole frontage, and works touching the shoreline bring in a further set of consents. Specialist restoration professionals will usually come from Como. The practical advice is to have the constraint position on a specific building established before exchange, because it determines the programme far more than the condition of the building does.
People we use in Tremezzina
Tremezzina: questions we are asked
What is Tremezzina and where exactly is it?
Tremezzina is a comune on the western shore of Lake Como, created in 2014 by merging Lenno, Mezzegra, Ossuccio and Tremezzo. It faces east across the centre of the lake towards Bellagio.
Because it is a merger rather than a single village, addresses here are still commonly given by the old names, and property is still described as being at Lenno or at Tremezzo rather than in Tremezzina. That distinction is worth keeping, since the four parts of the coast behave quite differently.
Is Tremezzina better than Bellagio for buying a villa?
For gardens, afternoon light and privacy, yes. For village life, connections and liquidity, Bellagio is the stronger position.
They sit opposite one another and look at each other, which makes the comparison unusually direct. Bellagio has a compact village with year-round services and the whole ferry network at its quay, but very little land and almost no gardens of scale. Tremezzina has the gardens, the aspect and the space, and a market where more comes available, but no single centre and a much quieter winter. Buyers who intend to spend long summers with a household and a boat tend to prefer this shore; buyers who want to walk out of the door into a village tend to prefer Bellagio.
Why is this stretch called the Riviera delle Azalee?
Because the east-facing slope is warm and sheltered enough to grow azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons in quantity, and the nineteenth-century garden villas along this coast were planted accordingly.
The microclimate is a genuine effect of aspect and shelter rather than a piece of tourist branding, and it is also why the great botanical gardens of the lake, Villa Carlotta among them, are concentrated on this particular few kilometres of shoreline.
How much of a problem is the main road?
It is the central practical question on this coast. The Regina road runs the length of the shore and passes behind or through many otherwise excellent properties.
Assess it property by property and at the right time of day: a house that is silent on a Tuesday in March may be a different proposition on a Saturday in August. The positions that resolve it are those set below the road with the garden running unbroken to the water, and those high enough above it to be out of earshot. This distinction accounts for more of the price variation along this shore than the village name does.
Can you buy a villa here with its own landing stage?
They exist, they are among the most sought-after properties on the lake, and they change hands rarely and usually privately.
Landing stages and boathouses on this shore are historic structures with established riparian arrangements; they cannot be created now, which is why the premium attaches to the house rather than to the view. If a boat is central to how you will live here, treat water access as a search criterion from the outset and expect to wait rather than to choose.
What is Tremezzina like out of season?
Quiet, and quieter than most first-time buyers expect. A good deal of the hospitality on this shore closes between November and March, and there is no single town centre that stays open.
If you plan to use a house through the winter, plan around Menaggio to the north and Como to the south for shops, services and somewhere to eat, and check the ferry and boat timetables for the winter service. The upside of the same fact is that the coast in February, with its empty road, empty gardens and low light on the water, is the version of it that owners tend to talk about most fondly.
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 Tremezzina, Population for the merged comune, and the constituent former comuni. Older data is published separately and must not be added together uncritically.
- FAI, Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano, Villa del Balbianello ownership, access arrangements and seasonal opening, all to be verified before quoting.
Como Private in Tremezzina
Read before you commit
From the journal