Security Bellagio
Securityin Bellagio.
Systems, monitoring and close protection where needed.
Lake Como Province of Como
Because Bellagio has a year-round population it also has a working trade base: builders, boatmen, gardeners and housekeepers who live within a few minutes of the houses they look after.
The constraint is access rather than availability. Deliveries and works in the historic core have to come up the stepped lanes or in from the water, which affects both cost and programme on any renovation. Any contractor who has not worked in the centre before will underestimate this.
For how this trade works across the whole lake, what to ask for, how the firms are chosen and what goes wrong, read security on Lake Como. For the village itself, read our guide to Bellagio.
Editorial note: we have not yet written up how this trade works in Bellagio specifically, so this page is kept out of search until we have. The introduction itself is unaffected. Ask and we will make it.
On the network
3 firms
Held across the lake rather than in one village. We introduce the two we would use ourselves for the job in front of you.
01What they do
Survey and system design
Working out where detection actually needs to be on a hillside site, and installing it in a way a protected building and its landscape will tolerate.
Monitoring and keyholding
Watching the system, holding a key locally, and having a named person who attends rather than a number that rings in another country.
Checks while the house is empty
Walking the grounds and the building through the off-season, and confirming that the system is still online rather than assuming it.
Close protection and event cover
Discreet cover for a family, an arrival or a party, arranged so that it does not advertise the house to the village.
Questions
Is Lake Como safe?
Yes, by any ordinary measure. The realistic risk to a second home here is opportunistic burglary during the months it stands empty, not anything more serious.
That risk concentrates on houses which are visibly unoccupied, isolated from neighbours, and approachable from the water or from an unlit lane. It is met with sensible detection, a genuine local response and the house being visited regularly, rather than with anything conspicuous.
How is alarm monitoring charged?
Normally an annual or monthly monitoring contract, separate from the cost of the installation, with attendance and keyholding either included or charged per call-out. We do not publish rates.
Read the contract for what attendance actually means: how quickly somebody sets out, from where, and whether they enter the property or wait outside for the police. A cheap monitoring contract with no local attendance is not really a security arrangement at all.
Can cameras be installed on a protected villa?
Usually, but not anywhere the installer likes. On a listed building, and within protected landscape, the placement and fixing of equipment and cabling has to be agreed rather than assumed.
The practical route is to have the architect involved at survey stage, so that equipment goes where it will be permitted and where it will not damage historic fabric. There are also rules about what a camera may overlook beyond your own boundary, which is worth checking on a site where the neighbours are close.
Written by The Como Private Desk
Elsewhere in Bellagio
Security in other villages
For people who work on the lake
Are you the bestat what you do here?
The list we introduce from is short and grows slowly: by working with somebody, seeing how a job goes, and only then adding them. If that is the standard you hold yourself to, tell us who you are. We read every one. We check work before we introduce anybody, and no money passes in either direction.
Put yourself forward