Mandarin Oriental, Lake Como

Blevio (Comasco: Biev [ˈbjeːf]) is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Como in the Italian region Lombardy, located about 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of Milan and about 2 kilometres (1 mi) northeast of Como. It overlooks the eastern shore of Lake Como from hilly slopes starting at more than 200 metres (660 ft). Blevio borders the following municipalities: Brunate, Cernobbio, Como, Moltrasio, Torno.

Villa Fontanelle is a villa (sometimes called a palazzo) near Moltrasio on Lake Como in Lombardy, Italy, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) from Milan. The four-storey yellow-painted building was built in the first half of the nineteenth century by the eccentric Lord Charles Currie, a visiting Englishman who fell in love with Lake Como. Failing to find a villa for sale, he decided to create his own, right on the water's edge. It was subsequently owned by Antonio Besana, a friend of the composer Giuseppe Verdi.By 1977, when it was bought by Italian designer Gianni Versace, it was in a state of abandonment, and the designer set about restoring it to its former neoclassical glory. The work, completed in December 1980, included landscaping the three acres (1.2 ha) of ornamental gardens, which include three cottages, a tennis court, water frontage of some 800m and a private mooring. Versace personally chose hundreds of oil paintings, and with other artworks displayed throughout the interior and exterior, he created a mini-palace that was a personal shrine. The English art historian and landscape gardener Roy Strong created the gardens of the villa for Versace. Strong also worked on the grounds of Versace's house in Miami, the Casa Casuarina.Before Versace's death, celebrities such as Sir Elton John, Diana, Princess of Wales, Sting and Madonna were regular guests at the property. Since the death of Versace in 1997, however, only American singer Jennifer Lopez and her husband Cris Judd were known to have visited, having spent their honeymoon there in 2001. Otherwise, the property was largely a lifeless temple to Versace.The estate is now owned by Russian millionaire restaurateur Arkady Novikov, who bought it for 33 million Euros in early 2008 and retained Milanese architect Claudio Pozza to undertake restoration works at the property.

Villa Plinianina is a patrician rural palace on the shores of Lake Como, located in the comune of Torno, Province of Como, region of Lombardy, Italy. The palace was named after a nearby spring identified by Pliny the Elder and a nearby Villa Pliniana (the name means "Small Pliniana"). A house on the property was built on this remote stretch by Giovanni Anguissola in 1570. Originally owned by the Caprera family, in 1839 the property was sold to countess Alessandrina de Mondran, wife of Count Ernesto Tanzi di Blevio, whose father had built nearby Villa Tanzi-Taverna in Torno. During the 19th-century, one of the owners was Marchesa Maria Trotti Belgioso.The present villa was built in around 1855 by Canzio Canzi or Giovanni Antonio Piotti from Vacallo.

The Villa d'Este, originally Villa del Garovo, is a Renaissance patrician residence in Cernobbio on the shores of Lake Como in northern Italy. Both the villa and the 25-acre (100,000 m2) park which surrounds it have undergone significant changes since their sixteenth-century origins as a summer residence for the Cardinal of Como. Nevertheless, visiting the garden in 1903 for Century Magazine, Edith Wharton found this to be ‘the only old garden on Como which keeps more than a fragment of its original architecture’, and noted that ‘though Queen Caroline anglicised part of the grounds, the main lines of the Renaissance garden still exist’. Since 1873, the complex has been a luxury hotel.

Villa Pliniana is a villa originally built in 1573, on the site of a more modest pre-existing building, in the territory of the municipality of Torno, in the province of Como, on the right bank of the western branch of Lake Como.

The Grand Hotel Brunate was the last work in the Art Nouveau style by the architect Giuseppe Casartelli. Located in Brunate, in province of Como, its construction was concluded in 1893, one year before the construction of the Como–Brunate funicular. Nowadays, after a renovation of the property, it is composed of private apartments.

Villa Erba is a 19th-century villa in Cernobbio, on the western shore of Lake Como in northern Italy. Its location is not far from the Villa d'Este luxury hotel in Cernobbio. The villa was built by Luigi Erba, brother of the prominent Italian businessman Carlo Erba (founder of the Erba pharmaceutical company), to express his grandiosity. After the death of Luigi Erba, the villa was inherited by his daughter Carla and was used by members of her family, including her son Luchino Visconti. In 1986, the property was bought by a public consortium to use as an exposition and congress center.

Breggia is a Swiss-Italian river. The springs are around the Monte Generoso and Monte d'Orimento in the Val d'Intelvi at an elevation of 1,389 metres (4,557 ft). It enters Swiss territory between Erbonne and Scudellate, and flows along the Muggio Valley until Chiasso/Vacallo, where it again enters Italian territory, in Maslianico. Breggia then drains into Lake Como, near Villa Erba between Como and Cernobbio at an elevation of 198 metres (650 ft).

The Como–Brunate funicular (Italian: Funicolare Como-Brunate) is a funicular railway that connects the city of Como with the village of Brunate in Lombardy, Italy. The line has operated since 1894, and is used by both tourists and local residents.

Villa Bernasconi is a typical example of an independent villa with a turret in the Art Nouveau style. Located in Cernobbio, it was commissioned by the textile manufacturer Davide Bernasconi to the Milanese architect Alfredo Campanini.

Como (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkɔːmo] , locally [ˈkoːmo] ; Comasco: Còmm [ˈkɔm], Cómm [ˈkom] or Cùmm [ˈkum];) is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy. It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como. Its proximity to Lake Como and to the Alps has made Como a tourist destination, and the city contains numerous works of art, churches, gardens, museums, theatres, parks, and palaces: the Duomo, seat of the Diocese of Como; the Basilica of Sant'Abbondio; the Villa Olmo; the public gardens with the Tempio Voltiano; the Teatro Sociale; the Broletto or the city's medieval town hall; and the 20th-century Casa del Fascio.Como was the birthplace of many historical figures, including the poet Caecilius mentioned by Catullus in the first century BCE, writers Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, Pope Innocent XI, scientist Alessandro Volta, and Cosima Liszt, second wife of Richard Wagner and long-term director of the Bayreuth Festival, and Antonio Sant'Elia (1888–1916), a futurist architect and a pioneer of the modern movement.

The province of Como (Italian: provincia di Como; Comasco: pruincia de Comm) is a province in the Lombardy region of Italy. It borders the Swiss cantons of Ticino and Grigioni to the north, the Italian provinces of Sondrio and Lecco to the East, the province of Monza and Brianza to the south and the province of Varese to the West. The city of Como is its capital—other large towns, with more than 10,000 inhabitants, include Cantù, Erba, Mariano Comense and Olgiate Comasco. Campione d'Italia also belongs to the province and is enclaved in the Swiss canton of Ticino. As of 31 December 2017, the main comuni (SG: comune) by population are: The Lugano Prealps cover the territory of the province, and the most important body of water is the glacial Lake Como.