Bellagio
— — evening, and the lake goes quiet on both sides.
Not only on a wall.
“The old town stands on the point where Lake Como divides, the Como arm to one side, the Lecco arm to the other. Stone stairways climb between the houses, too narrow for cars, and two great gardens hold the headland above the water. Ferries cross all day from Varenna and Menaggio, and in the late afternoon the light comes off both arms at once. People have come here to sit and look at this for a very long time. Nobody is in a hurry.
Bellagio, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Bellagio sits at 229 metres on the tip of the promontory that divides Lake Como into its two southern arms, the Como arm to the west and the Lecco arm to the east, with the wooded Triangolo Lariano rising behind it. The comune holds around 3,800 residents. There is no direct railway; most visitors arrive by ferry, the car ferries from Varenna and Cadenabbia crossing in under fifteen minutes, or by the narrow, winding SP583 from Como. The point itself, Punta Spartivento, looks straight up the lake toward Varenna and the mountains beyond. Pliny the Younger kept a summer villa near here, which he called Tragedy, almost two thousand years ago.
What makes Bellagio is the water around it. Lake Como, the Lario, is one of the deepest lakes in Europe, dropping past 400 metres not far offshore, and at Bellagio its two arms meet beneath the promontory. The point is called Punta Spartivento, the place that divides the wind, because the breezes off each arm arrive from different directions and part there. Ferries work the centre of the lake all day, linking Bellagio with Varenna, Menaggio and Cadenabbia in a short triangle of crossings. From the small park at the tip, the water opens in three directions at once, the Como arm, the Lecco arm, and the long northern reach toward the Alps.
The old borgo climbs in stone. Its lanes are stepped stairways too steep and narrow for cars, running up from the lakefront between shuttered houses. Two gardens shape the headland. Villa Melzi, built between 1808 and 1810 for Francesco Melzi d'Eril, Duke of Lodi under Napoleon, was laid out by the architect Giocondo Albertolli, and its gardens are open to the public. Above the town, the park of Villa Serbelloni covers roughly 21 hectares of the promontory, on the site of a castle pulled down in 1375; the villa now belongs to the Rockefeller Foundation and the grounds are seen by guided walk. The stone holds the heat of the day into the evening.