Lungolago di Tremezzo

The Tremezzo lakeside promenade connects villas, churches and parkland along the western shore of Lake Como, with the Bellagio promontory across the water.

Why it matters

Tremezzo earned its place among the Borghi piu Belli d'Italia on the strength of this shore, where the villas and hotels of the resort age line up beside a public walk. The western-shore landscape brings together aristocratic gardens, the seventeenth-century parish complex, a rationalist-era public park and Villa Carlotta, with sightlines across the water to the promontory that closes the lake's southern basin.

What to notice

The promenade's historic sequence extends westward from Bolvedro. Stately residences include La Quiete, Villa Sola Cabiati and Villa Albertoni Pirelli, known as Carlia; the parish church of San Lorenzo marks the old village centre. The heart of Tremezzo includes cafés and historic hotel terraces, the green of Teresio Olivelli park and the monumental approach to Villa Carlotta. Across the water, the promontory of Bellagio and the changing light on the opposite shore define the panorama.

Context and history

The lakeside frontage grew along the ancient Regina road, the Roman-era route that ran along the western shore, and its modern character was fixed by the villa era that the Greenway's history of the borgo dates from the eighteenth century, when lakeside tourism turned Tremezzo into a resort for aristocratic and then international guests, drawing figures from Verdi to Queen Victoria in the borgo's golden decades. In the early twentieth century the rationalist architect Pietro Lingeri left his mark on the same stretch, and the creation of the public park in 1925 carved a civic space into the sequence of private grounds. Since the 2014 amalgamation, the promenade has belonged to the municipality of Tremezzina, whose public spaces form part of the civic landscape of the mid-lake villages.