How this Italian hotel dynasty is making multi-generational living five star
Luxury hotelier Valentina De Santis of Lake Como palaces Passalacqua and Grand Hotel Tremezzo has created a similarly grand home for her extended family at Villa Mondolfo.
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Freed from the constraints of university study in Milan, Valentina De Santis took flight to the ends of the earth. Landing in Australia with future husband Andrea Caniggia, the young hotel heiress lapped up the laid-back lifestyle of the land Down Under.
“We fell in love with the country,” De Santis recalls of her first overseas holiday in 2007. The maiden voyage kindled a lifelong love of carefree travel and exotic beauty, which De Santis now channels into spoiling guests at her luxury hideaway hotels.
“It was my graduation gift,” she says of the Australian adventure. “We tried to explore as much as possible. We were driving everywhere and the distances, the nature, everything was really incredible.”
De Santis sees a symbiosis between Australia and Italy. “There is a lot of affinity,” she chirps, as we meander through the fairytale flower gardens of her luxurious Passalacqua hotel, perched above an iridescent Lake Como.
“I think the attitude to life is very similar – the idea of enjoying and making the best of your life – and also the pursuit of beauty. We don’t call it ‘laid-back’ here, but the philosophy is the same. We call it dolce far niente – sweet doing nothing – which is about enjoying and making the best of your life. I think it is such a precious thing to cultivate.”
As the chief executive of the family business that owns the exclusive Passalacqua and its glamorous big-sister hotel, Grand Hotel Tremezzo, De Santis has precious little time for dolce far niente.
De Santis, who is draped like a diaphanous butterfly in floaty fabrics created in Como’s world-renowned silk mills, flits around her Passalacqua palace, plumping cushions to ensure a just-so aesthetic. “Relaxing is not in my vocabulary,” she grins, as she greets a table of guests salivating over home-cooked lunch on a sun-dappled terrace overlooking the lake. “I’m a working mother! But I love to stay busy.”
Family is infused through De Santis’s professional and personal lives. Husband Andrea, whom she met at university, is the chief operating officer of the family business. The couple lives in one wing of their 18th-century family villa with children Paolo, 8, and Maria, 5. Valentina’s parents, entrepreneurs and hoteliers Paolo De Santis and Antonella Mallone, reside in the other wing of the resplendent home they purchased in 1998.
The family compound, Villa Mondolfo, is built next to the majestic Villa Olmo, just a 10-minute stroll along the shimmering lake to the cobblestoned streets and boutiques of Como town centre. “I remember as a teenager passing in front of the villa while walking on the passeggiata a lago of Como, and dreaming of living there,” De Santis remembers. “But it was a dream that I could never imagine was going to come true. I love it because it is the happy place of my family, three generations that share a home very dear to each of our hearts.’’
The villa was built in the late 18th century on the ruins of an ancient monastery, and embellished with romantic gardens and a majestic decorative gate. Its soaring five-metre-high ceilings are decorated with spectacular frescoes discovered, then painstakingly uncovered, during a restoration. Sentimental antiques are juxtaposed with modern works of art, reflecting the entire family’s passion for collecting the unique and unusual from high-end galleries, downtown flea markets and exotic holiday destinations.
Every summer, the De Santis family selects an artist for an exhibition that spills from the home and onto the lakefront lawn.
The eclectic collection of furniture and paintings, curios and heirlooms are switched regularly between the two wings of the home – and sometimes to and from the family’s luxury hotels. A lacquered Chinese cabinet, discovered in a bedroom of Passalacqua when they bought the property, now takes pride of place in De Santis’s own living room. Antique wooden sideboards and a collection of hand-painted pottery plates, which decorated her nonna’s home for decades, now reside in Passalacqua’s dining room.
For years on end, De Santis had coveted one of her father’s favourite paintings, by Roman artist Marco Tirelli. Eventually he relented and transferred the longed-for artwork to his daughter’s wing of the villa, where it shines above her sofa. “It’s a very simple piece, just black and white, and it presents almost like a moon,” she says. “It looks super mysterious to me. Tirelli is one of the representatives of the Scuola Romana, dating back to the ’80s, at their high point of success. I’ve always loved it; it’s one of my favourite pieces.”
De Santis’s interior-design decisions for her home are more minimalist than her choices for the hotels, where she showcases the imagination and mastery of Italian artisans – from the Florentine chandelier forged from brass leaves and flowers, to the cheeky cherubs adorning the ornate iron entrance doors to Passalacqua.
At home, however, unfussy furniture draws attention to the 3D-effect parquet floors and ornate ceilings. A modern pendant light, delicate as a dandelion, dangles above a sleek wooden dining table. “I always try to find pieces which are timeless,” De Santis explains.
“They’re always meaningful – like pieces that my grandmother selected from a market in Paris, mixed with a bit of contemporary art which my father gave me.”
Both wings of the villa are linked by a spectacular sunroom, enclosed by glass walls that glisten with sunlight. “My happy place is my terrace,” says De Santis. “It offers such a beautiful view to Como and over the lake, and is one of the most special places in my home. I love to organise dinners on the terrace with friends, and have barbecues on the weekend. It’s a very magical place for the kids to play.”
De Santis spent her own childhood bathed in the beauty of Lake Como. In 1975, her maternal grandfather purchased the Grand Hotel Tremezzo, which had fallen into decline since its opening in 1910 as a spectacular retreat for European royalty and playground for American celebrities. Valentina, who was born in 1982, grew up spending summer holidays in the hotel, getting lost in its fragrant terraced gardens, pestering her parents in the office and exploring back-of-house.
“I was enjoying the pool, of course, and the tennis court, but my real passion was to be in the back office of the reception or in the kitchens or the wine cellar,” she remembers with a smile. “It taught me the importance of what happens behind the scenes.”
De Santis moved to Milan to earn a degree in economics for the arts, culture and communication, followed by a Master of Science in general management from Bocconi University. After her Australian holiday she started at Bain & Company, in an arm of the consulting firm specialising in fashion and luxury. Her parents invited her to join the family business in 2010, the year of the hotel’s centenary celebrations, initially focusing on its sales and marketing strategy. In 2018, the family purchased Passalacqua, a villa constructed in the late 18th century on land once owned by Pope Innocent XI, above the village of Moltrasio. They spent almost four years transforming it into a luxury 24-suite retreat to soothe the souls of world-weary guests.
To visit Passalacqua is to drift into a dream. The scenery of the ethereal Lake Como, guarded by mountains, brings a sense of serenity. It was here that composer Vincenzo Bellini spent four years in residence, composing his opera La Sonnambula in 1831. French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was a guest at the Neoclassical villa, as was wartime British prime minister Winston Churchill.
Passalacqua is named after its aristocratic Italian founder, Count Andrea Lucini, and topped the inaugural list of the World’s Best 50 Hotels in 2023, as judged by a panel of 580 anonymous leaders in the hotel industry. One of its most breathtaking features is the secret stone tunnel, built to transport produce delivered by boats at the shore of the lake, to the basement of the villa. Today the underground tunnel lures enchanted guests to an 18-metre indoor pool, lined with a precious mosaic of Palladian marble, that overlooks a blissful panorama of gardens, lake, mountains and sky.
Just inside the entrance to Passalacqua is a dome-like glasshouse that showcases a treasure trove of luxury Italian accessories, clothing and homewares that are sold through the De Santis family’s new online boutique, Sense of Lake. Locally crafted silk scarves sit beside seashell charms embellished with gemstones and jewel-embellished evening bags. Limited-edition Bric’s luggage is painted with Lake Como holiday scenes.
Boardshorts and summer hats – patterned with the fish motif that belonged to the original crest of the Passalacqua family and now represents the hotel logo – have been designed by Adelaide-born, Sydney-based tailor Patrick Johnson, whose global P. Johnson fashion brand boasts showrooms in Tuscany, London and New York. His creative collaboration began after he booked into the villa as a guest.
“Our friendship was born here by the pool,’’ says De Santis. “He was so inspired that he proposed to make us a small collection and created this very beautiful pattern taking the fishes from our logo.”
The glamorous and gregarious De Santis has a rather happy habit of forging friendships with antipodean creatives. Emilia Wickstead, the New Zealand-born designer based in London, was invited to the opening of Passalacqua in 2022 “and from there a great friendship was born”. Wickstead, a favourite of the Princess of Wales, has now created a capsule collection of swimsuits and kaftans decorated with a vintage rose print referencing Passalacqua’s fragrant flower gardens hiding the signature fish motif. La DoubleJ founder J.J. Martin also debuted her first interior design project to coincide with Passalacqua’s grand opening, decorating the bar and pool area.
The vibe here is all about villeggiatura – the tradition of a long, languid Italian summer holiday. “It is a very vintage word that nobody uses anymore, but it means holiday, in a very traditional way,” De Santis explains. “In the past, holidays were much different. Now it’s a weekend packed with two million activities, and maybe you change your hotel every night.
“But this villa was built with the idea of hosting writers, politicians like Churchill, artists and musicians. Here, they were just spending their time with no plans, but with the idea of enjoying the moment, enjoying the beauty, without the rush that’s a part of our holidays nowadays. We want our guests to still have those days of feeling relaxed and having no plans – just stopping and resting.”
Ah, the lost but life-affirming art of dolce far niente.
This story is from the September issue of WISH.
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