Private request

Ask Como Private

Write it as you would say it. There is no form to complete and no category to choose. One of us reads every request, and it goes only to the people who can actually answer it.

One of three

What do you need on Lake Como?

I'm looking for a 4-bedroom villa near Bellagio around 3m

Write it as you would say it. We will ask two or three questions after this, and nothing you do not need to answer.

01What members ask for

Property

A four-bedroom villa near Bellagio, around 3m.
An honest view on what our house would fetch privately.
An architect who has worked on protected buildings.

The house

Someone to manage the villa while we are in London.
A gardener who understands old terracing.
The house opened and staffed for the first week of July.

The week

A Riva with a skipper next Thursday.
Dinner for eight somewhere we can arrive by boat.
A car and driver from Malpensa on the 14th.

02What happens next

One of us reads it

Not a form handler and not a shared inbox. A request about a house goes to the property desk, one about a boat to the marine desk.

We ask two questions

Usually about dates and about how firm the requirement is. It saves both of us a week of looking at the wrong thing.

It goes to the right people

With the detail that matters and nothing else. Nobody is told who you are or what else you have asked for unless you want them to be.

You get an answer

Usually within the day, and usually two options rather than twenty. If we cannot help, we say so and tell you who can.

02Discretion

Your name isnot the firstthing we share.

Requests go out with the detail that matters and nothing else. Nobody in the network is told who you are, where you are staying, or what else you have asked for, unless you want them to be.

About membership

Or start with a village

BellagioThe village on the promontory where Lake Como divides. The most visited address on the lake, and still one of the hardest to buy into.

CernobbioThe first town north of Como on the western shore, close enough to the city to live in properly and far enough out to be on the lake.

MenaggioThe town at the western end of the mid-lake crossing, with a working piazza, a golf course above it and a road out to Switzerland behind it.

TremezzinaNot 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.

VarennaThe eastern-shore village at the mouth of the Lecco branch, small, steeply built, and the only address of its kind on the lake with a railway station of its own.

ComoThe city at the foot of the western branch. Roman in plan, silk in trade, and the one address on the lake that works as a place to live rather than a place to summer.

Read first

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.

Where to Stay on Lake ComoPosition decides more about a stay here than the house does: which shore, which branch, how you arrive and what you will actually do with the day.

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.