The grand dame of Lake Como just opened the largest spa in the area.
For 150 years, Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni has reigned as the grand dame of Bellagio. The butter yellow palazzo, which is perched on a promontory with panoramic views of Lake Como and the dramatic Grigna Mountains, was built in the 1850s as a gift for a countess. Transformed into a hotel in 1873, it has been family-run for more than a century, and to step through its doors is to pass through a portal in time. There are soaring frescoed ceilings, ornate gilt moldings, Murano chandeliers, Louis XVI cabinets, velvet fainting couches, and sweeping marble staircases. In the Franz Liszt Imperial Suite sits a piano once played by the famous composer himself. Indeed, everything at Villa Serbelloni is so stately, dignified, and gracious that you feel a little gauche (not to mention anachronistic) whipping out your smartphone. If that’s not enough to lure you—and possibly make you want to stay indefinitely—the hotel now also boasts the biggest spa on Como.
Luce del Lago, Villa Serbelloni’s newly refurbished 1,500 square foot spa, was envisioned by Italian architect Silvia Giannini to reflect the peaceful aquatic rhythms of the freshwater lake, with latticed walls and gleaming tiles. But more than anything else, it’s a total cocoon. Anyone suffering from a little too much muchness—a frantic Milan fashion week schedule, for example—would be well served here: There are no distractions, not even any windows, just restful immersion. Feeling spendy and sybaritic? Try the new Private Spa Suite, which features a unique sauna cabin that incorporates synchronized light and sound, illuminated quartz-sand beds, hydrotherapy baths, and an intimate marble hammam room for personalized treatments (which can be paired with champagne, should you wish). The spa menu is replete with lifting and firming facials using French skincare line Sothys; an intriguing Lake Mud Ritual involving thermal mud that begins at the feet and revitalizes the entire body using a method devised by a professor from Padova University; and a “mind, body, and soul experience” called Five Senses of the Lake features Italian botanical extracts, a water bed, and light therapy.
A suite of treatments that make use of the spa’s beautiful new hammam area are especially outstanding, and may be the closest to an authentic Moroccan experience you can have outside of Marrakech, even down to the mint tea and dates that are served as a treat afterwards. Depending on which one you choose, you will be steamed, scrubbed, soaped and slathered with mineral mud, argan oil, or honey and royal jelly—and you will emerge as smooth as a newborn. Should you be needing to atone for a double serving of the liquid nitrogen ice cream served at Villa Serbelloni’s creatively gastronomic Mistral restaurant, or recover from a perfumed gin journey at the hotel’s bar (in which cocktails are fragranced with spritzes of pomegranate, lavender, lemon, orange, cardamom), any of these should do the trick.
A long hallway leads from the spa to the outdoor swimming pool and sand-covered terrace equipped with sun-loungers and a staircase descending into the cool, refreshing water of the lake. Take some time there, if you can. The walls are lined with historical images from Villa Serbelloni’s past. Corseted turn-of-the-century royals bask in the hotel’s garden, which looks much the same as it does today. JFK arrives in a convertible, smiling that toothy smile; Winston Churchill toddles around in his bowler hat. Countless greats have signed the guest book here, from Mary Shelley to Clark Gable. Sofia Loren’s heels click-clacked across the ornately inlaid wooden floors of the grand salon. No doubt the charm and calm of this place proved as restorative then as it does now. But the spa? It makes things even better.
