Pass through the wrought-iron gates of the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, leaving the narrow streets of Bellagio behind, and you’re immediately hopscotched back in time. The property, on the shores of Lake Como, was built in the 1850s as a birthday gift from Count Frizzoni to his wife. Today, it is Bellagio’s only five-star luxury hotel (a distinction that may soon change with the nearby historic Hotel Grande Bretagne being redeveloped as a Ritz-Carlton, projected to open next year).
“For me, the most important thing about Villa Serbelloni is that time stops here,” General Manager Jan Bucher, the fourth generation of his family to steward the property, told me.
Indeed, it does. Frescoed ceilings, sweeping marble staircases and Murano chandeliers conjure the grandeur of another age, and many of the furnishings at the Relais & Châteaux property are original to the period. The time I was curious about and wanted to stand still, however, was more than a century later: June 1963, when John F. Kennedy spent a night at Villa Serbelloni during his European tour, just months before he was assassinated.
The property now calls the room he occupied the JFK Suite, and I had the chance to spend several nights in the very place where the president rested before continuing on to Rome. More than six decades later, I was about to experience my own version of that escape.
Nothing quite prepared me for the fin-de-siècle opulence behind the door of my temporary quarters, Suite 133. Spanning 860 square feet, it opens into a stately room fit for, well, a statesman. Empire and Neoclassical splendor mix with the decorative flourishes of Italian Liberty — framed by marble columns, a crystal chandelier and a soaring coffered ceiling adorned with floral frescoes. Silk-covered armchairs flank the carved bed, the same space where JFK and a succession of luminaries once slept, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Queen Marie of Romania and King Farouk of Egypt. I certainly felt more regal than presidential when I slipped between the covers each night.
A separate jewel box of a sitting room overlooks Lake Como and the hotel’s expansive pool and beach club. The balcony and generous windows frame ferries shuttling passengers across the water, and the space feels less like a hotel than a European salon from the Grand Tour era. It’s little wonder that the JFK Suite remains among Villa Serbelloni’s most requested accommodations.
I spent my days reading, gazing out at the lake from the open windows and generally luxuriating in the pleasure of having nowhere else I needed — or wanted — to be. Initially, I wondered how just one night here would have been enough for JFK to unwind. After a single day, I understood completely.
“At Villa Serbelloni, you can really enjoy this time bubble,” Bucher said. “This is a place you would never find anywhere else.”
Sadly, he’s right. And I dream of returning to that blissful bubble.
