World’s Best Hotel is Villa d’Este, Cernobbio

World’s Best Hotel is Villa d’Este, Cernobbio
Seven out of ten guests are British or American. Past visitors include Verdi, Callas and Onassis

CERNOBBIO – With its 140-year history and enduring appeal, the world’s best hotel stands on Lake Como. US-based Forbes magazine, which draws up an annual league table of the world’s 400 best hotels, this year put Villa d’Este at Cernobbio in first place, ahead of the Peninsula in Bangkok, the Landmark Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, the Four Seasons George V in Paris and Dubai’s Burj Al Arab. It is the first time that an Italian hotel has topped the prestigious list.

Built in 1568 and converted as a hotel in 1873, Villa d’Este today has 152 luxuriously appointed rooms – the high-season rate is 900 euros a night – in two buildings set in long-established parkland in one of the loveliest corners of Lake Como. There is a unique heated swimming pool that floats on pontoons, a private sandy beach for children, indoor pool, wellness centre, eight tennis courts, restaurants and night club. CEO Jean-Marc Droulers says: “The award to Villa d’Este is an award for tradition and a milestone that honours hospitality in Italy”.

Over the centuries, Villa d’Este’s rooms have welcomed droves of dukes, kings, queens, presidents, film stars, writers, singers, musicians and fashion designers. The first customer was Giorgio Ricordi, who took a whole floor of the Queen’s Pavilion, where his guests were Giuseppe Verdi and then Giacomo Puccini. Villa d’Este has seen celebrities like Alfred Hitchcock, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Leopold of Belgium, Vittorio Emanuele, the princes of Monaco, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, John Kennedy, Mikhail Gorbachev, Winston Churchill, Ava Gardner, the shah of Persia, Maria Callas, Aristotle Onassis and many more besides. Every year, the great and the good of world finance, politics and industry assemble here for the Workshop Ambrosetti.

In awarding the distinction to Villa d’Este, the Forbes jury of entertainers, journalists, writers, television presenters, all frequent stayers at luxury hotels, listed the delights of the five-star hideaway at Cernobbio, pointing out that it is easy to get to and has everything: “Location, views, architecture, beauty, service, decor, history, easy accessibility, a spa, sightseeing and weather”. Villa d’Este was built in 1568 by Pellegrino Tibaldi for Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio, whose family owned it for two centuries. Later, it became a residence of various European aristocrats. In 1815, the property was purchased by Caroline of Brunswick, the estranged wife of George IV, and in 1873 a group of business men converted it into a luxury hotel. Today, Villa d’Este, some 70% of whose guests are British or American, belongs with two other luxury hotels in Como and one in Florence to a company that in 2007 posted record profits of eight million euros. The parent company is owned by the Brianza-based Fontanas, a family of leading bolt manufacturers.

Luigi Corvi
25 giugno 2009