Como is Italy's grandest lake – and the hotels that dot its shores are some of its grandest places to stay. Including gleaming 16th-century villas set in beautifully manicured gardens and glossy recent arrivals, these are our favourite hotels to book when visiting Lake Como. From Mandarin Oriental's mesmerising floating swimming pool to the flower-filled gardens of Il Sereno.

Mandarin Oriental, Lake Como

Once the lakefront estate of Italian opera singer Giuditta Pasta, Mandarin Oriental took over this 75-room grand dame in 2018. Milan-based designer Eric Egan made over heavy interiors (also behind the Belmond Hotel Caruso revamp), sharpening the meticulous gardens and floating swimming pool. Mandarin Oriental added a lounge for afternoon tea and a spa in the basement, bringing in Italian chef Massimiliano Blasone to oversee the resort’s restaurants and bars. This was the Mandarin Oriental's first European resort and a rare new arrival on the lake – yet it slotted into the scene seamlessly.

Address: Mandarin Oriental, Lake Como, Via E. Caronti, 69, 22020 Blevio CO, Italy
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Villa Lario

With just nine suites (all with views over the lake) and accessed sharply from Como's one road, this place feels definitively private, set apart, very much on its own picturesque high pinnacle hanging over the water. Part of a 19th-century property previously owned by the Lombardi family, it has something no other five-star hotel around here can quite claim: a very secluded pontoon that guests can swim off directly, bothered by nothing but the occasional boat dropping somebody off for lunch. (Inexplicably, most hotels don't encourage swimming in Como itself). It's worth coming to eat – just-caught fish; tomatoes from the hotel gardens – even if you don't stay, but there is something particularly authentic about this side of the lake and it would feel a shame to not sleep here too.

Address: Villa Lario, Via Giacomo Matteotti, Pognana Lario, Lake Como
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Il Sereno

The construction of something entirely new on Lake Como was always going to raise suspenseful eyebrows – but Sereno's bold, fresh look very much reflects the area's healthy atmosphere. The whole place is fun and clever. Moveable screens on the balconies transform each bedroom into a super-private, inside-outside den. A gorgeous pool sits close to a private stretch of beach by a pontoon bobbing with hotel-owned Rivas. Executive Chef Raffaele Lenzi serves wonderful modern Italian food in the restaurant, but be sure to walk into the town of Torno, 10 minutes away, to Ristorante Vapore, which is beloved of Robert De Niro and is where locals go for a great binge of clam pasta and octopus carpaccio.

Address: Il Sereno, Via Torrazza, Torno, Lake Como, Italian Lakes
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Grand Hotel Tremezzo

The panoramic views around this hotel, on the shore between Lenno and Griante, melted even Darth Vader's heart. In Attack of the Clones, the young Anakin Skywalker woos Princess Padmé, both of them in a daze, brains blasted by the snow-topped, sprawling green of the mountains all about, and the clusters of pretty gardens nearby. This exceptionally beautiful old villa, with a floating pool and an elegant restaurant (try the lake-bass carpaccio with cumin broth), has a feel of the most romantic European cities about it. A touch of Budapest and Paris and Vienna; high corridors and ceremonious butlers, and – seemingly perpetually parked outside – a Seventies Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider in the same damson red as the velvet in the bar.

Address: Grand Hotel Tremezzo, 8 Via Regina, Tremezzo, Italy
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Villa d'Este

Preposterously and hilariously grand, this is where Elizabeth Taylor came to hide out at the start of her affair with Richard Burton. As the great director Mike Nichols later recalled, so long as she wore a large-ish hat, nobody gave her a second glance. Built in 1568 as a summer residence for a wealthy cardinal with a passion for art, the hotel has an immense 17th-century shelled grotto, decorative gardens lapped by water so clear you can see pebbles fall to the distant bottom, and chefs in high white hats inspecting the engraved glass on bridal tables. In the morning, breakfast of Sicilian cannolis and iced espresso is taken as the sun starts its journey across the lake, settling on a flower-plumed promontory beyond. Boats cut through the water, leaving a fizzing trail behind. Everybody sits and watches – wondering where reality leaves off and dreaming begins.

Address: Villa d'Este, 40 Via Regina, Cernobbio, Italy
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