Villa d'Este

The course is not on the lake but inland at Montorfano, about 14 kilometres from Cernobbio. Peter Gannon designed it in 1926: 5,760 metres to a par of 69, modest by modern standards, yet long enough to stage twelve Italian Opens. The hotel owned the club until the late 1970s and bought it back in 2024.

It is open from March to December, every day except Tuesday, and tee times are booked through the hotel's Guest Relations team. The 2026 golf package, valid from 21 March to 21 November with a two-night minimum, includes breakfast, an 18-hole green fee, a cart and rental clubs. Shorter formats suit a lighter schedule: a morning nine followed by lunch, a sunset nine with a glass of Franciacorta, or a round with a PGA Italia professional.

The villa was begun in 1568 as the summer residence of Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio, to plans by Pellegrino Pellegrini, known as il Tibaldi. From 1815 to 1820 it belonged to Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales, and it has been a hotel since 1873.

The 151 rooms are split between two buildings in a ten-hectare park that belongs to the Grandi Giardini Italiani network: 124 in the main Cardinal's Building and 27 in the Queen's Pavilion, added in 1856 by Baron Ippolito Ciani. The estate also has four private villas, let separately.

Seven restaurants and bars take turns through the year. The Veranda and Bar Canova stay open all season and the Grill from April to October; in summer they are joined by Il Platano, where the menu crosses the Mediterranean with Japan, and the Sundeck beside the pool.

That pool is the curiosity: it floats on the lake. It opened in 1966 and, according to the hotel, was the first on Lake Como. Add eight tennis courts, six of them clay, a gym open around the clock and a Beauty Center for treatments.

For golf, the window is the club's season: March to December. In May the villa stages the Concorso d'Eleganza, the classic-car show held here since 1929. Winter is not a complete shutdown: the Greenhouse restaurant opens from November to January, and the festive programme runs from 1 December 2026 to 7 January 2027.

• A Hitchcock location. In 1925 Alfred Hitchcock shot scenes of The Pleasure Garden at the villa.
• A fake fortress for a general. Vittoria Peluso, a former La Scala ballerina known as "la Pelusina" and widow of Marquis Calderari, married the Napoleonic general Domenico Pino; a mock fortress was built in the park in his honour.
• Hercules in the garden. The Calderari works begun in 1784 gave the park a nymphaeum and a small temple with a 17th-century statue of Hercules hurling Lichas into the sea.
• A meeting place for economists. Every September since 1975 the villa has hosted the Ambrosetti Forum, an international economic conference.
• A hundred years of golf among 30,000 trees. In 2026 the Montorfano club celebrates its centenary with a full calendar of events. The course sits at about 400 metres above sea level, framed by more than 30,000 trees – chestnut, birch and pine – with the small Lake Montorfano in view.