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Filario Hotel Lake Como | Lezzeno, Lombardy Italy | The Aficionados

The Rationalist Shore

Filario Hotel & Residences

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Filario Hotel & Residences | Lezzano Shoreline, Lake Como

Intro

Filario Hotel & Residences sits on a narrow shoreline shelf at Bagnana, on the Lezzeno arm of Lake Como, where the mountain drops close to the water and leaves little ground to build on. The façade is Ceppo di Gré, a Lombard conglomerate stone, cut and laid in long horizontal courses that follow the line of the slope behind it, so the building reads first as a ledge in the hillside and second as a hotel. Across the water are Bellagio, Isola Comacina and Villa del Balbianello, the three things most visitors come to this lake to see, all of them held in the view from a shore that few people think to book. Filario is among the few contemporary design hotels on a lake whose reputation rests on neoclassical villas, and it rose on the site of an old iron wire factory, which is the truer history of this shoreline: Lezzeno worked for a living long before it was photographed. Thirteen rooms face the lake, twenty-two residences and villas are spread through separate buildings along the beachfront, and the whole of it took five years to build.

A homage to Italian custom, style and native craftsmanship, Filario flirts with time-past decadence and chilled luxury – a hip pairing of design and heritage

Silk Trade, Boatyards and Crafts

Filario Hotel Lake Como | Lezzeno, Lombardy Italy | The Aficionados

The site was a small wire factory, one of the industrial pockets that once lined the eastern shore alongside the boatyards and the silk trade. Alessandro Sironi acquired it with the Como construction house Nessi & Majocchi and spent five years building, most of that time spent within the landscape and heritage restrictions that govern what can be put up on Lake Como. The constraints shaped the plan. With limited ground available, they decided to build fewer rooms and make them larger, which is why this hotel has only thirteen.

The stone did the rest of the work. Ceppo di Gré is a Lombard conglomerate, a stone of pebbles set in a natural matrix, quarried in the region and long used in the architecture of the lakes. At Filario it is hand-cut and coursed to echo the curve of the mountain rising behind the building, so the elevation settles into the slope instead of standing off it. The reference point is Como's own rationalist tradition, the interwar movement that gave the city some of the most significant modern architecture in Italy, and Filario takes its geometry, its horizontals and its clarity from that lineage.

Modern Lakeside Living, Dressed by Agrati

Filario Hotel Lake Como | Lezzeno, Lombardy Italy | The Aficionados

The interiors were the work of the late Alessandro Agrati, founder of Culti Milano, who came at a building the way he came at a scent, elementally and by feel. His method was to dress a room with textiles, light and a small number of strongly made objects, and to let the materials carry the tone. That template still governs the house. The palette is drawn straight off the water: soft greys, marl, creamy sage, muted teal, worked into quilts, velvet cushions, armchairs and rugs.

Materials are local and named. Furniture comes from the workshops of Brianza and Cantù, the towns that have supplied Italian design its cabinetmakers for a century. Locally sourced timber veneer wall linings give the rooms a lined, cocooning quality. Bed linen, towels and slippers are Frette. Terraces and shoreline are furnished with custom Ethimo pieces, so the material language runs unbroken from the lobby to the water's edge. The Como studio CMP Design recently reworked the restaurant terrace, with Pedrali seating from Bergamo and textiles sewn by Como makers.

Thirteen Rooms on the Water

Filario Hotel Lake Como | Lezzeno, Lombardy Italy | The Aficionados

Every room faces the lake, in four categories. The Deluxe Room opens off a hallway that gradually reveals the view, with the bed set around a corner and a terrace at the end. The Superior Room has a sheltered balcony, screened from the neighbouring terraces, and the same soft register of colour. The Junior Suite places a floor-to-ceiling glass wall between the room and the water, with a canopy bed, a soaking tub, and a terrace set up for dinner at the lake's edge. The Grand Suite is the largest, a waterfront apartment with a living room, a four-poster bed, a full-length terrace and a private pool.

Throughout, king-size beds sit in cuboid timber frames, bathrooms run to slate and stone, and bi-folding Crittall-style doors open the rooms onto their terraces. Only three rooms occupy each floor, which is largely why the hotel feels as quiet as it does.

Residences, Penthouses and Villas

Filario Hotel Lake Como | Lezzeno, Lombardy Italy | The Aficionados

The twenty-two residences occupy separate buildings across the beachfront property, and they are the reason Filario suits a fortnight as readily as a weekend. They begin with a forty square metre lakefront studio, living and sleeping combined beneath a high timber ceiling, with a glass wall that pulls in light reflected off the water. From there they run through one- and two-bedroom apartments with private gardens, porches or terraces, each with a full kitchen, up to a one hundred and thirty-eight square metre three-bedroom penthouse with a terrace along its full length and a view down onto the beach.

The villas sit closest to the water. The two-bedroom villa has a planted patio that runs straight out to the sand, with a mezzanine over the twin room. The three-bedroom keeps a portico with direct beach access. The four-bedroom is the largest thing here, with three doubles and a single, a broad sun terrace and private lake access of its own. All of them come with the hotel's services, which makes them useful for families, groups travelling together, and anyone who wants a kitchen and a front door as well as a restaurant.

The Beach, the Pool and the Marina

Filario Hotel Lake Como | Lezzeno, Lombardy Italy | The Aficionados

Lezzeno holds one of the few genuine beaches on Lake Como, and Filario has its own stretch of it, with cabanas and daybeds set back from the shingle. Above it, an infinity pool sits on the terrace and reads as continuous with the lake beyond. A gym, plus kayaks and paddleboards, are available for anyone who wants to be out on the water before the ferries start.

The private marina changes how a stay works. It puts Bellagio, Villa del Balbianello, Isola Comacina and the villages of the Tremezzina within a short crossing, without a car or a timetable, and it has been fitted with charging points for electric boats, which is still unusual on this lake. Filario has taken delivery of electric craft to use from it. The choice sits with the rest of the house: quieter on the water, and no fuel on a lake this clean.

Ristorante Filo and Yeast Side

Filario Hotel Lake Como | Lezzeno, Lombardy Italy | The Aficionados Filario Hotel Lake Como | Lezzeno, Lombardy Italy | The Aficionados

Two kitchens open at different hours of the day. Ristorante Filo is the formal one, where Chef Alessandro Parisi works northern Italian tradition through a contemporary lens: black cuttlefish with peas and corallini pasta, Carmagnola rabbit with langoustine, risotto with nettles and robiola. The sourcing is deliberate, built on relationships with growers, fishermen and producers around the lake and across Lombardy. Sommelier Luciano Gusmeroli curates the wine list, which leans toward expressive bottles and regional depth.

Down on the shore, Yeast Side is the beach bar and pizzeria, open through the day and into the evening. Pizzas carry nduja, Bronte pistachio or Amalfi lemon; the cocktails are cold, and the tables sit close enough to the water to hear it. It is the address locals use as much as guests.

Lezzeno and the Larian Triangle

Lezzeno occupies the eastern shore of the lake's south-western arm, below Bellagio, on a stretch that stayed working while the far bank filled with villas. Boat builders, silk mills and small factories were the economy here, and the village keeps the plainer look that comes with that. It also gets sun differently from its neighbours: the mountain behind it means light arrives late and lingers long over the water in the evening.

Everything is close. Bellagio is a few minutes up the shore, Villa del Balbianello sits opposite at Lenno, Isola Comacina is the lake's only island and its oldest story, and the Greenway del Lago di Como picks up at Colonno for anyone who prefers to walk the shoreline. Como itself, with its Duomo, its silk museum and Terragni's Casa del Fascio, is around twenty-five minutes south on the SP583. Behind the hotel, the forest climbs, and the paths go with it.

Most guests arrive by road. The best way to arrive is by water, into Filario's own marina.

Alessandro Sironi

Entrepreneur and founder of Hotel Filario, Alessandro Sironi

Filario is Alessandro Sironi's project. He grew up on Lake Como in a family already in hospitality, then worked in hotels in Miami and the United Kingdom before returning with a clearer view of what he had grown up beside. The site at Bagnana had been in the family's orbit; the partnership with Nessi & Majocchi turned it into a building.

He wanted a modern house that could still belong to the lake, made from the lake's own materials by the region's own workmakers. "History relates to tourism and travel," Sironi says. "It's more than just looking at something beautiful. It's knowing the past, what to discover, the architecture and the movements." The same team now runs the Windsor at Laigueglia on the Ligurian coast, Filario's sister house.

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