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Plinius Lifestyle Hotel Lake Como
Como, Italy · Independent · Accessible Luxury
Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger were both born in Como, so the name gets a lot of use here. This one stands on Via Garibaldi, and when the hotel was dug in 1966 the builders went straight into Roman Comum: masonry walls, a white marble cippus, a column base, amphora shards, and a piece of a funerary stele with its inscription still legible. Twenty-eight rooms sit above all that, redone in 2024, two hundred metres from the ferry pier on Piazza Cavour and the same again from the trains to Milan, with the silk shops in between.
- 28 rooms
- Rooms from 215 sq ft (20 m²)
About Plinius Lifestyle Hotel Lake Como
- The name once belonged to a different house: Como's Grand Hotel Plinius opened on the lakefront in 1898 for the Volta Exposition and survives today as the Palace Hotel.
- The Roman town beneath these streets was laid out as Novum Comum. Pliny the Elder left it to write his Natural History and died in 79 AD watching Vesuvius erupt.
- Entry-level rooms start at 215 sq ft (20 m²).
History
The hotel occupies a mid-twentieth-century building on Via Garibaldi, in the pedestrian heart of Como between Piazza Volta and the lakefront. Its one genuinely remarkable moment came before it opened: Como's municipal archaeological register records that in 1966, during the construction of the Hotel Plinius, Roman masonry and finds turned up by chance on the site between Via Garibaldi and Via Volta. The list includes a white marble cippus, the base of a semi-column and a serizzo stylobate, common ceramics, amphora fragments, terra sigillata, and a fragment of a funerary stele still carrying part of its inscription.
The hotel has twenty-eight rooms in single, double and triple categories, fully renovated in a modern style in 2024, some looking over the old town and the shopping streets. It trades today as Plinius Lifestyle Hotel Lake Como.
The name has older Como associations that belong to another building. The city's first grand hotel opened on the lakefront in 1898 as the Grand Hotel Plinius, engineered by Giuseppe Salvioni with the decorative scheme of its top floor by the young Milanese architect Federico Frigerio, built in Liberty style to house the international visitors expected for the 1899 Volta Exposition and among the first hotels anywhere with running water in every room. That house was renamed the Palace Hotel in 1992 and stands at Lungo Lario Trieste. The two properties are not related.
The setting
Via Garibaldi runs through the walled Roman core of Como, laid out by the Romans as Novum Comum, and the hotel sits a few steps from Piazza Volta, Piazza Duomo and Piazza Cavour. The ferry pier on Piazza Cavour is about two hundred metres away and Como San Giovanni station is the same distance in the other direction, with Milan roughly forty minutes down the line. In between are the silk shops: Como has been a silk town since the sixteenth century and still supplies the fashion houses. Frigerio's Tempio Voltiano, built in 1927 to hold Alessandro Volta's surviving instruments, is on the lakefront promenade, and the funicular up to Brunate leaves from the far end of it.
Experiences
- Lake cruise to the villas and gardens — Reaching the historic villas and their gardens by the lake, using the public pier close to the Grand Hotel Imperiale.
- City tour in Como — Starts in Piazza Cavour and walks west along the 'Lungolario Trento' to the public gardens.
- Discovery of the Lake Como villages — Places to visit include Lenno, Tremezzo and Bellagio, called the 'Pearl of the Lake'.
Amenities
- Shower
- Safe
- High speed internet access
- SmartTV
- Coffee machine
- Magnifying mirror
- Bathrobe and slippers
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