One day last June, Dante Pennè, a plumber based in Laglio on Lake Como, received an unusual phone call. It was George Clooney’s bodyguard, Giovanni: there was a problem at Villa Oleandra, Cooney’s lakefront residence, so could he please come immediately? “I arrive and they are all upset,” Pennè recounted to the Corriere Della Sera newspaper. The issue? The swimming pool was half empty and freezing cold – and the Clooneys were expecting visitors.
“Giovanni tells me, ‘Hurry up, hurry up!’” Thankfully, Pennè's skills were up to the task. A few hours after he fixed the pool, a police-escorted motorcade arrived at the mansion carrying the Clooneys’ weekend guests: Barack Obama and his family. Only on Como.
The lake has captured the imaginations of the great and the good ever since the Romans first adopted it as a holiday spot. But it wasn’t until the Romantic poets eulogised it on their Grand Tours that it began to acquire the fame that it has today. Lord Byron visited, as did Wordsworth, who described it as “a treasure, which the earth keeps to itself”.
Not so any more. Over the last century, everyone from Frank Sinatra to Madonna, Sir Winston Churchill to Donatella Versace and Sir Alfred Hitchcock to Sir Richard Branson have found themselves drawn to its tranquil waters, balmy climate and picturesque Alpine landscapes. While the pull of Como never went away, recently it seems to be attracting a new crowd.
Perhaps it’s the glamorous locale luring.