Lenno
At the western shore of Lake Como's central basin, Lenno sits quietly at the point where a small promontory pushes out into the water — and at the tip of that promontory stands Villa del Balbianello, its loggia overlooking the lake in three directions. Cardinal Durini built it in 1787, and the terraced gardens that fall toward the water have since appeared in two very different films: Star Wars Episode II and James Bond's Casino Royale.
Beyond the villa, Lenno rewards a slower look. An 11th-century baptistery, octagonal and frescoed, stands near a collegiate church built over the foundations of Roman baths. A 14th-century signal tower — built not for defense but for tax collection — rises above the old streets. Since 2014, Lenno has been administratively part of Tremezzina, but its character remains its own.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to walk the wooded path to Balbianello rather than take the boat — it's about half an hour from the village and you arrive at the gardens from above, which changes the whole experience. They also mention the baptistery: easy to miss, worth finding, genuinely old.
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How Lenno came to be
Lenno's roots reach back to the Golasecca civilization in prehistoric times, and by the 5th century BC the area had come under Roman influence. Pliny the Younger kept a villa here he called Comedia, positioned so he could fish from the window. The town grew into a proper urban community around the founding of Novum Comum in 59 BC.
The medieval centuries brought the Abbey of Piona as feudal overlord, then in 1494 the Sanseverino family took control. After being ransomed by the Regia Camera, Lenno gradually reinvented itself as a lakeside retreat during the 19th century. The explorer and philanthropist Guido Monzino bought Villa del Balbianello in 1975 and on his death left it — along with two billion lire for its upkeep — to the FAI, Italy's national trust.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
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When to go
Spring and early autumn are the most comfortable seasons: mild temperatures, the lake at its clearest, and the gardens of Balbianello open. July and August are warm and crowded; winter is quiet but the villa closes and ferry services thin out considerably.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.