Lake Como

— The Grand Account —

Pliny the Younger kept two villas on this lake and wrote letters about the fishing; little of substance has changed. Como has been the retreat of consequential people for two thousand years — Roman senators, Lombard silk merchants, composers, and now those who simply require the world to recede. The lake's geography enforces calm: mountains drop straight to the water, villages cling where they can, and the grand villas face one another across a silence broken only by the wake of a passing Riva. Nothing here is new, and nothing needs to be. The elite come to Como not to be seen but to be unreachable — graciously, and with very good gardens.

Fly from Farnborough into Milano Linate and the lake is barely an hour north, the transfer dissolving into the journey's first pleasure as the road finds the water at Como. Families and parties travel best in the V-Class VIP Senzati — a private lounge in motion — while couples favour the Rolls-Royce Cullinan for the corniche roads above the western shore. The romantic alternative is the drive itself: Eurotunnel Le Shuttle from Folkestone, a night in Champagne or beside Lake Geneva, then over the Alps and down to the water. Throughout, a single FFGR chauffeur attends, from London until the moment the villa gates close behind you.

Villa d'Este at Cernobbio has received the same families for generations, its floating pool unchanged since 1966; Il Sereno at Torno and the Mandarin Oriental at Blevio offer the modern counterpoint. Days move by water — a varnished Riva to lunch in Bellagio, an afternoon in the gardens of Villa del Balbianello, where the lake performs its best light. Dinner might be taken on the terrace of the Grand Hotel Tremezzo, the mountains darkening over the water. Your chauffeur shadows the boat by road, so nothing is ever more than minutes away. Como asks only that you slow down. Those who do rarely come just once.