Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / Italy / Como / Vista Palazzo
Vista Palazzo
Como, Italy · Independent · Accessible Luxury
Como waited a long time for a five-star hotel. It arrived in 2018, when LarioHotels finished an eighteen-month rebuild of the 1870 neo-Gothic palazzo on Piazza Cavour, one of the most photographed facades on the lake: eighteen rooms in Dedar Milano silks, hand-cut marquetry floors, marble and onyx baths, and a wrought-iron staircase left from the building's earlier life. The whole top floor goes to the view, with Sottovoce laying twenty-four covers above the rooftop bar. Villa d'Este bought the house in 2025 and now runs it as Palazzo Venezia.
- 18 rooms
- Opened 2018
About Vista Palazzo
- Villa d'Este took over in December 2025 and rebranded the house Palazzo Venezia, making it the first Leading Hotels of the World address inside the city of Como itself.
- Sottovoce, the first rooftop restaurant Como ever had, seats twenty-four and sets its tables with porcelain Gio Ponti designed for Richard Ginori. It has been in the Michelin Guide since 2020.
- The Passera family's run in hospitality began in the early 1900s with a restaurant aboard one of the steamships that crossed Lake Como.
- On the ground floor, the century-old Bar Monti has closed and is being rebuilt as Caffè Cavour, reviving a pasticceria that Enrico Monti founded on the piazza in the nineteenth century.
History
The building went up in 1870 as a neo-Gothic palazzo on Piazza Cavour, facing the first basin of Lake Como, and spent its long life as one of the most photographed facades on the water. LarioHotels, the Passera family group whose hospitality story began in the early 1900s with a restaurant aboard a Lake Como steamship, gutted it over eighteen months and opened it in June 2018 as Vista Palazzo Lago di Como: the town of Como's first five-star hotel, and the first house in what became the Vista brand.
Only eighteen rooms and suites went in, dressed in Dedar Milano textiles, hand-hewn marquetry floors and marble-and-onyx bathrooms, with a wrought-iron staircase kept from the building's earlier life. The top floor was given over entirely to the view: a library, an outdoor Infinity Bar, and Sottovoce, Como's first rooftop restaurant, a twenty-four-seat room that has appeared in the Michelin Guide since 2020 and took two hats from the Espresso guide in 2022 under chef Stefano Mattara.
In April 2025 Villa d'Este S.p.A. bought the hotel, along with the neighbouring Terminus, from LarioHotels. LarioHotels ran the 2025 season; from 1 December 2025 the property passed to Villa d'Este La Collezione and was rebranded Palazzo Venezia, becoming the first Leading Hotels of the World five-star inside the city of Como. Guests now also use Villa d'Este's pools and Sporting Club at Cernobbio, reached by road and by boat.
The setting
Piazza Cavour is Como's front door onto the water. The ferry landing sits directly opposite, the Duomo and the pedestrian old town are a few minutes behind, and the funicular up to Brunate and Frigerio's Tempio Voltiano are both a walk along the shore. Como San Giovanni station puts Milan about forty minutes away. The grid of streets behind the piazza is Roman, laid out as Novum Comum, and the town has traded in silk since the sixteenth century, which is still what the shop windows show.
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