There are hotels that impress you with their size, their marble lobbies and their armies of staff. And then there is Passalacqua, which does almost the opposite.
Hidden behind gates in the little village of Moltrasio, on the western shore of Lake Como, Passalacqua has just 24 rooms and suites scattered among an 18th-century villa, its former stables and a romantic house beside the lake. From the road, there is little indication of what lies beyond. Inside, seven acres of terraced gardens tumble towards the water, punctuated by fountains, ancient trees and terraces seemingly designed for doing very little at all.
When I first visited in July 2023, Passalacqua had been open barely a year. It was already one of those addresses being passed quietly among people who travel often and know where to go before everyone else does.
Two months later, the secret was well and truly out: Passalacqua was named The World’s Best Hotel 2023 in the inaugural World’s 50 Best Hotels ranking.
And perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is that it still doesn’t really feel like a hotel.
AN ARISTOCRATIC HOUSE ON LAKE COMO
Passalacqua’s story stretches back much further than its relatively recent life as a hotel.
The villa as it stands today was created at the end of the 18th century for Count Andrea Lucini-Passalacqua by the Milanese architect Carlo Felice Soave, enlarging an earlier property once owned by Pope Innocent XI.
Its history reads rather wonderfully like the cast list of an Italian period drama. Composer Vincenzo Bellini stayed here and, in 1831, composed La Sonnambula at the villa. Over subsequent generations the house passed through a succession of colourful owners, while illustrious visitors reportedly included Winston Churchill.
In 2018, the property was acquired by the De Santis family, the Lake Como hoteliers behind the celebrated Grand Hotel Tremezzo. What followed was a three-year restoration before Passalacqua opened as a hotel in June 2022.
The result isn’t a conventional restoration where everything old has been made suspiciously perfect. Instead, Passalacqua feels layered — as though generations of rather glamorous people have lived here, collected beautiful things, moved furniture around and occasionally decided that another Murano chandelier was exactly what the room needed.
TOTAL MAKEOVER
The transformation must have been extraordinary.
The De Santis family took what had become a fading historic estate and restored it with an almost obsessive attention to detail. Original frescoes and architectural elements coexist with gilded mirrors, antique furniture, patterned fabrics, elaborate headboards, paintings, photographs, porcelain and a glorious abundance of decorative objects.
Minimalism has very clearly not been invited to Lake Como.
And that is precisely the charm.
There is a confidence to the interiors that makes today’s carefully coordinated beige luxury hotels seem rather timid by comparison. Nothing appears chosen because a designer decided it was “on trend.” Rooms feel collected rather than decorated.
Outside, meanwhile, the gardens descend in terraces towards Lake Como and the hotel’s private jetty. There are olive trees, roses, magnolias and fountains, along with a tennis court, bocce, an outdoor gym and a swimming pool surrounded by wonderfully cheerful parasols.
Then there is the hotel’s little orange Fiat 500 Spiaggina, which has become almost as photographed as the villa itself.
WELCOME TO THE CLUB
When I stayed, in July 2023, Passalacqua had not yet received its World’s Best Hotel title. But something was clearly happening. It already had the atmosphere of a private club whose membership consisted of an entertaining mixture of the rich, the famous and the extremely well-dressed.
The influencers were fairly easy to identify. They generally dressed better than everybody else and tended to travel around the property accompanied by selfie sticks.
The genuinely famous were harder to spot.
Most looked as though they were enjoying a holiday from their public lives: linen shirts, cotton sundresses, sandals, sunglasses and plenty of sunscreen. Unlike Lake Como’s larger grand hotels, where arriving guests inevitably pass through conspicuous public spaces, Passalacqua feels remarkably protected from the outside world.
Once the gates close behind you, there is very little reason for anyone else to know you are there.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DETAILS
The grand entrance is Passalacqua at its most theatrical: soaring ceilings, an elegant double staircase, flowers and enormous blue-and-white porcelain jars creating something close to the entrance hall of an aristocratic palazzo.
Then the scale changes.
Much of the rest of the hotel consists of relatively intimate rooms leading into one another — sitting rooms, salons and corners in which to disappear for an hour.
This is one of Passalacqua’s cleverest qualities. For all its decorative exuberance, it rarely feels formal.
Windows open towards the gardens. Sofas invite sprawling rather than posing. Books, pictures and objects fill almost every available surface. You can quite easily imagine that the owners have simply gone out for the afternoon and left you the house.
The bar is similarly intimate, occupying two small rooms rather than some cavernous cocktail lounge. One lends itself to afternoon tea or drinks with friends; the other has the comfortable disorder of a bar in someone’s exceptionally nice summer house.
That sense of domesticity extends to the bedrooms.
Passalacqua’s 24 rooms and suites are divided among three very different buildings: 12 in the main Villa, eight in the Palazz, the former stables, and four in Casa al Lago, tucked into the gardens close to the water.
No two are quite alike.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DETAILS
Interestingly, the rest of the public areas are mostly one small room after another, each as cozy as the last one. With windows looking out onto the front gardens, they are the perfect — and I must say perfectly decorated to replicate an aristocrat’s tasteful home — shady places to hide from the afternoon sun with a good book, if you are the type to do so.
The main entrance is the brightest part of the hotel. It’s straight out of a royal palace, with two floor high ceilings and a very lovely double staircase lined with flowers and giant blue-and-white porcelain jars.
The bar, too, is made up of two small rooms. In one room, a family can comfortably enjoy afternoon tea or pre-dinner drinks. Meanwhile, the main bar itself is more of a cozy corner with a counter and bar stools, and again art and paraphernalia everywhere to make you feel like you are a guest in someone’s summer home.
SMILES ALL AROUND
And then there are the people.
Aside from its beauty, what stayed with me most about Passalacqua was the staff. Everyone seemed genuinely pleased that you were there. Requests were handled without fuss. There was warmth without overfamiliarity and attentiveness without the uncomfortable sensation of being constantly attended to.
That distinction matters.
The very best luxury hotels understand that service is not about reminding guests how much service they are receiving. It is about making everything feel effortless.
Passalacqua manages this particularly well because the service suits the house. You are treated less like the occupant of Room 12 and more like a guest who happens to be staying for a few days.
My favourite ritual was wonderfully simple: champagne and canapés at sunset, sitting in one of the elegant pergola facing Lake Como. Nothing could possibly be wrong with the world, with a view like this at sunset.
Below, the lake changed colour as the light disappeared behind the mountains. Around us were gardens that had been here in one form or another for centuries. And behind us stood a villa that somehow felt less like one of the world’s great hotels than an extraordinarily beautiful private home.
Which, perhaps, is the greatest luxury of all.
FROM SECRET ADDRESS TO WORLD-BEST HOTEL
When I visited in July 2023, Passalacqua was still something of an insider’s address. By September, that changed dramatically when it became the inaugural World’s Best Hotel.
The accolades have continued. Passalacqua ranked No. 2 in the world in 2024 and No. 4 in 2025, when it was also named The Best Hotel in Europe and received the Best Boutique Hotel Award.
Yet awards only explain part of its appeal.
Lake Como has no shortage of grand hotels, famous villas and extraordinary views. What Passalacqua has managed to create is something rather harder to manufacture: intimacy.
It is grand without being pompous, extravagant without taking itself too seriously, and luxurious without constantly reminding you how much everything costs.
And with only 24 rooms hidden away behind those gates in Moltrasio, it retains the delicious illusion that somehow, for a few days, the whole place belongs to you.
Passalacqua is located in Moltrasio on Lake Como, approximately 15 minutes by car from Como and about an hour from Milan.
There is something especially seductive about hotels that still feel like private houses.
Passalacqua achieves this on Lake Como through intimacy, history and the sense that guests have been invited into a beautiful home rather than checked into a conventional hotel. It is a quality I have come to appreciate even more in places such as La Esperanza Granada, a private hacienda in Andalusia where the experience is similarly built around space, privacy and the luxury of having an entire estate feel almost entirely your own.
The settings could hardly be more different — Lake Como on one hand, the hills outside Granada on the other — but the appeal is surprisingly similar: beautiful architecture, gardens, long lunches, unhurried afternoons and the increasingly rare pleasure of staying somewhere with the soul of a home rather than the machinery of a hotel.
Passalacqua is a member of Preferred Hotels and Resorts. Read more about the best hotels in the world in Travelife Magazine.
