Villa d’Este rents four private villas in its park at Cernobbio, and the largest starts at 13,500 euros a night. That is more than the hotel’s most expensive suite, the 108-square-metre Cardinal Suite at 8,500 euros, and it buys something the suite cannot: a house of 650 square metres, four bedrooms, a private terrace on the water and ten hectares of park at your gate after the day visitors have gone. Here is what each of the four villas costs, what it contains and how the numbers compare with a room in the hotel itself.
Villa Cima, 13,500 euros: the princess’s house on the water
Villa Cima is the one the price list is built around. The hotel dates it to 1815 and credits it to Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales, who owned the estate from 1815 to 1820 and is the reason the property carries the d’Este name at all. The house spreads 650 square metres over three levels, with four bedrooms and room for up to ten guests, and it stands directly on the lakeshore, a position the hotel describes as pied dans l’eau. The terrace faces the water and is screened from the park. Divide the rate by a full house and it comes to 1,350 euros a guest a night, which is close to the price of a Classic room in the hotel, from 1,150 euros, with a fraction of the space and none of the privacy.
Villa Garrovo, 12,900 euros: the largest of the four
Villa Garrovo is bigger than Villa Cima and slightly cheaper. It measures 700 square metres, has six bedrooms and sleeps up to thirteen, which makes it the villa for a family of three generations or a group that wants to keep a full staff at arm’s length. The restoration dates from 2015. The ground-floor salons open straight onto the park, there is a private gym, and a patio of 60 square metres sits in the greenery. At thirteen guests the rate works out at 992 euros a head, the lowest per-person figure of the four. The name is the old one: the stream that runs through the estate is the Garovo, and the original 1568 house was called Villa Garovo after it.
Villa Malakoff, 8,350 euros: the hillside view
Villa Malakoff was built in 1860 on the slope above the park, so it trades the waterline for the panorama. It is the most compact of the family villas at 300 square metres, with four double bedrooms and a maximum of eight guests, and its terraces look down over the park to the lake beyond. Eight guests bring the rate to 1,044 euros a head. For a couple travelling with two other couples it is the sensible choice: the price of two Presidential suites, which the hotel lists at 6,800 euros each, for a whole house.
Mosaic House, 4,500 euros: one suite beside the nymphaeum
Mosaic House is the smallest and the strangest. Ninety square metres, one suite, two guests, a private terrace and what the hotel calls a secret garden, set in the middle of the park beside the mosaic and the nymphaeum that give the estate its most photographed corner. At 4,500 euros it costs less than the Presidential suite and more than a Classic room, and it is the only one of the four that a couple can take without paying for empty bedrooms.
| Villa | Size | Bedrooms | Guests | From, per night | Built or restored |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Villa Cima | 650 sq m | 4 | up to 10 | 13,500 euros | 1815 |
| Villa Garrovo | 700 sq m | 6 | up to 13 | 12,900 euros | restored 2015 |
| Villa Malakoff | 300 sq m | 4 | up to 8 | 8,350 euros | 1860 |
| Mosaic House | 90 sq m | 1 suite | 2 | 4,500 euros | park pavilion |
What the rate does and does not say
The villa pages on the hotel’s site give sizes, bedrooms and a starting price per night. They do not give a minimum stay, and they do not list what the rate includes, so breakfast, butler service, boat transfers and access to the Sporting Club are questions for the reservations office, not assumptions to make from the brochure. The prices are starting prices, and in the high weeks of the season expect the figure to move. What is certain is what surrounds them. The hotel has 151 rooms and suites in the hotel, 124 in the Cardinal Building and 27 in the Queen’s Pavilion of 1856, the Veranda, the Grill, Il Platano and the Sundeck for meals, Bar Canova for the evening, the floating pool that has sat on the lake since the mid-1960s with 45,000 litres of water inside it, and a Sporting Club with eight tennis courts.
The house of 1568 behind all of this
The estate began as a cardinal’s retreat. Tolomeo Gallio, cardinal and native of Cernobbio, commissioned the house from Pellegrino Pellegrini in 1568 and called it Villa Garovo after the stream. It became a hotel in 1873, and the guest book from the first decades reads like a season at La Scala: the hotel’s own history names the Ricordi family of music publishers among the very first guests, with Verdi and Puccini following. The park was declared a National Monument in 1913. None of this is decoration. It is the reason a night in Villa Cima costs what it costs, and the reason the price holds.
Open until 7 January 2027
The other change this year is the calendar. Villa d’Este has traditionally closed in November; for 2026 it stays open until 7 January 2027, with a wine-dinner series from 4 November, Jazz Nights from 27 November and a festive programme from 1 December to 7 January. For the villas this matters more than for the hotel. Christmas in a 650-square-metre house on the lake, with the park empty and the restaurants open, is new for Cernobbio, and the four houses are the only way to buy it. Villa Sola Cabiati at Tremezzo, another grand-hotel villa on the lake, follows its own calendar, which we set out in our guide to a private stay there.
The Luxury.it perspective
The interesting number is not 13,500. It is 992: the cost per head of Villa Garrovo with thirteen guests, which is lower than the starting rate of the cheapest room in the hotel. Villa d’Este has priced its villas so that a full house at Garrovo or Malakoff is the rational choice for a group, and the rooms upstairs are the rational choice for couples. That is unusual. Many grand hotels price their villas as trophies. Cernobbio has priced them as accommodation, and a family that would otherwise take five rooms in the Cardinal Building now has a reason to take Villa Garrovo instead. The one thing we would want in writing before booking is the minimum stay. A single night at 13,500 euros is a story; a seven-night minimum at 94,500 is a different decision, and the villa pages leave that question open.
Related guides
Best hotels on Lake Como · Private villas with hotel services in Italy · Luxury villas on Lake Como · Miralago apartments at Villa d’Este
