Autumn on Lake Como

Villa d'Este golf, fireside dinners and the last golden light — the case for Como in October, when the lake quietens and the chestnut trees turn.

There are perhaps three weeks each October on Lake Como when the lake recovers a quality of stillness that is otherwise rare in its calendar. The summer hotel guests have departed. The big late-September weddings have wrapped. The Como Open golf at Villa d'Este has finished. The chestnut trees on the lower slopes of the eastern shore are turning — a slow run of yellows and bronzes that catches the last of the year's strong light. The lake itself, with the mountain wind that builds in the afternoon, is full of small whitecaps. And the hotels that remain open — most do, into late October, before the November closures — operate at a relaxed pace that the high season does not permit.

The Light of the Month

The light on Lake Como changes character in the second week of October. The summer light — direct, hard, almost overhead at midday — gives way to a lower, longer light that hits the lake at oblique angles for most of the working day. The result, particularly in the late afternoon, is what photographers call the magic hour stretched across most of the afternoon. The villa facades on the western shore catch the light through to about four-thirty; the eastern peaks throw their long shadows across the water from five.

This light is, in our reading, the light that makes the great Como photographs. The famous evening shots of the Villa del Balbianello, the Villa Carlotta, Bellagio from the water — most are taken in October. We arrange, for clients in residence during the right week, a private wooden boat for an hour at four-thirty in the afternoon to circuit the western shore from Cernobbio to Tremezzo at the speed of an unhurried sightseeing tour. With a glass of Franciacorta from a thermos and a small sweater for the evening cool, this is among the most distinctly Como hours one can spend.

Villa d'Este in October

Villa d'Este, the institutional grand hotel of Lake Como, has a particular character in October that the high summer does not show. The hotel is markedly less full. The dining room — Mistral, the starred restaurant — is at a more relaxed pace. The famous floating swimming pool on the lake, which in August requires reservation, is largely empty. And the hotel's golf course, the eighteen-hole layout in the hills above Cernobbio, is at its annual peak: the trees in colour, the fairways still green, the temperatures ideal for a long round.

We arrange for clients staying at the hotel in October a particular sequence: a morning round of golf with a local professional, a long lunch at the clubhouse with a glass of Lugana, an afternoon at the hotel's wellness centre, a dinner at Mistral or at the Veranda overlooking the lake. The round itself, on a clear October morning with the Alps fully visible to the north, is among the most beautiful golf days we know how to arrange in Italy.

The Country Around the Lake

Lake Como sits within an hour's drive of two interesting agricultural regions that we recommend to clients in October. The first is Franciacorta, to the east, which is in the closing weeks of its sparkling-wine harvest in early October. We arrange private cellar visits with several of the major houses — Ca' del Bosco, Bellavista, Ferghettina — typically as a day trip with lunch at one of the producer-restaurants. The drive from Como to Franciacorta, through the agricultural country south of Bergamo, takes about ninety minutes.

The second region is the Valtellina, to the north of the lake, which is in its vineyard harvest in the same window. The wines of the Valtellina — alpine Nebbiolo, made in conditions that produce a quite different expression of the grape than the Langhe — are little known internationally and are at their most interesting in October. A day trip from Como to one of the smaller producers, Ar.Pe.Pe. or Sandro Fay, with lunch at the Ristorante Fior di Frutta in Sondrio or at a producer's table, is a side-trip we recommend to clients with a serious wine interest.

The Quieter Hotel Week

Hotel availability on Lake Como in October is markedly better than in the high summer. The major properties — Villa d'Este, the Tremezzo, Il Sereno, Passalacqua, the Mandarin Oriental — are typically running at perhaps fifty to sixty per cent occupancy in the second and third weeks of the month. Suite availability is often last-minute and at meaningful discounts to the August rates. For the client who has been priced out of Como in summer, October is the realistic alternative.

We have, in addition, arranged in recent years a small number of private villa stays in October that have been particularly successful. The villa rental rates on the lake drop substantially after the wedding season, and the staffing — chef, housekeeper, captain for the boat — is more available than in the summer. A week in a private villa on the western shore in mid-October, with the boat for the afternoon circuits of the lake and a private chef cooking three nights of seven, is, we think, the considered Como week. It is also, in many ways, the most distinctly autumnal of our European autumn weeks.

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