Il Sereno Lago di Como – Torno, Italy
Patricia Urquiola’s contemporary lakeside icon, where stone, walnut and glass replace Como grandeur with modern serenity.
Why DNA Hotels Loves It
● A genuinely radical presence on Lake Como: Patricia Urquiola’s architecture and interiors reject faux-historic grandeur in favour of warm, tactile modernism.
● Every suite faces the lake, while the extraordinary floating walnut-and-copper staircase, vertical gardens and waterside infinity pool make the landscape part of the architecture.
● The new Listening Suite pushes the hotel’s design philosophy into sound, combining Japanese listening-room culture, bespoke acoustics and serious analogue audio equipment in an almost 200-square-metre private retreat.
A Different Kind of Lake Como
Lake Como has spent centuries perfecting a particular kind of glamour. Neoclassical villas. Ornate terraces. Marble staircases. Formal gardens cascading towards the water. Then, in 2016, Il Sereno Lago di Como arrived in Torno and deliberately changed the conversation. Rather than imitate the great villas surrounding it, the hotel embraces an unapologetically contemporary language of glass, stone, walnut, bronze and copper. Its long horizontal volumes rise directly from the eastern shore, opening almost entirely towards the water. Designed by Patricia Urquiola, it became one of the first modern five-star hotels on the lake to treat contemporary architecture not as an interruption, but as a legitimate new chapter in Como’s design history.
Patricia Urquiola, From Building to Bedside
Urquiola’s involvement extends far beyond choosing furniture. She shaped virtually every element of the hotel, from its spatial language and materials to fabrics, fittings and individual pieces of furniture. The palette is deliberately connected to the landscape: deep greens and petrol blues echo the water and wooded hillsides, while walnut, leather, bronze and stone bring warmth to the otherwise restrained architecture. One of the defining moments is the sculptural floating staircase, constructed from walnut and copper pipes with local craftspeople. It descends through the hotel towards Il Sereno Al Lago restaurant, turning an everyday architectural necessity into one of the property’s most memorable objects. Outside, botanist Patrick Blanc’s vertical gardens soften the geometry with dense vegetation. It is modernism made sensual.
Thirty Suites, Thirty Front-Row Seats
Every one of the hotel’s 30 suites faces Lake Como. Floor-to-ceiling glazing makes the water impossible to ignore, while private furnished terraces extend the rooms towards it. Interiors continue Urquiola’s material language with Venetian terrazzo, walnut, stone, textured fabrics and bespoke furnishings. The effect is sophisticated without becoming pristine. There is colour. There is texture. There are strong pieces of design. But nothing competes with the view. Even the flexible “Night and Day” areas have been designed around how guests actually inhabit a room — becoming a workspace, lounge or additional sleeping area depending on who is staying. Il Sereno understands that the ultimate decorative object on Lake Como is Lake Como itself.
The Listening Suite
Its latest experiment goes beyond what a hotel room should look like. Inspired by the listening rooms of Japan, the Listening Suite is conceived as a private sanctuary devoted to music — somewhere listening itself becomes an experience rather than background entertainment. Handcrafted acoustic walls wrapped in locally sourced fabrics control the sound, while bespoke walnut furniture and monumental speakers constructed in the same Noce Canaletto walnut used elsewhere in the hotel integrate the technology into Urquiola’s visual language. There are vacuum-tube amplifiers, a restored reel-to-reel player and a personal collection of vintage vinyl assembled by hotel owner and music obsessive Luis Contreras. At almost 200 square metres, it can function as suite, private music room or dining space. You can sit on the floor and disappear into an album, share dinner around the enormous stone table, or simply watch the lake while analogue music fills the room. In a hospitality world increasingly obsessed with screens, it feels wonderfully counterintuitive.
Italian Craft, Right Down to the Boats
Il Sereno’s modernity doesn’t mean disconnecting from Lake Como’s traditions. Quite the opposite. Urquiola drew extensively on the region’s long history of woodworking, silk production, stone craftsmanship and boatbuilding, commissioning many elements locally rather than importing an international design language wholesale. That extends onto the water. The hotel’s elegant wooden boats were built by Cantiere Ernesto Riva, a Lake Como boatbuilder whose history stretches back to 1771, with interiors designed by Urquiola. There is also the wonderfully glamorous Vaporina del Lago water limousine. Leaving Il Sereno by boat may be the best way to understand the building: its calm horizontal geometry appears almost to grow directly from the shoreline.
The Lake as Lifestyle
Life here revolves around the water. A long heated infinity pool sits directly beside the lake, visually dissolving into it. A small beach provides direct access for swimming, paddleboarding, kayaking and rowing, while the hotel’s private dock turns the lake itself into the main route for exploring Como. The spa occupies a former stone boathouse, retaining another physical fragment of the site’s past beneath the contemporary hotel above. And at Michelin-starred Il Sereno Al Lago, chef Raffaele Lenzi adds another layer of internationalism, combining his southern Italian background with Japanese techniques and wider global influences. The architecture may be disciplined. The experience isn’t austere.
Why It Works
Il Sereno could easily have become the sort of hotel people admire more than they enjoy. It hasn’t. Urquiola’s greatest achievement is making highly considered contemporary design feel comfortable, tactile and remarkably relaxed. Stone is softened by timber. Geometry by vegetation. Architecture by water. And unlike so many modern hotels built in historic destinations, Il Sereno doesn’t pretend to belong to another century. It confidently belongs to this one. On a lake famous for looking backwards, Il Sereno proves that Lake Como can be every bit as seductive when it looks forward.
