A house that narrates itself
No wall labels and no roped-off rooms: the villa speaks in the first person through letters and voices, and asks you to open its drawers and answer its telephone.
Dario Crespi — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Alessandra Jovinelli — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Pandabretzel — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dstevanato — CC BY-SA 4.0
Honestly, no. Give a single day to Como's cathedral and lakefront, or to Villa Carlotta or Balbianello, which have no substitute. Villa Bernasconi is a clever small museum rather than a headline sight, and it belongs on your second or third day, in a spare afternoon hour, or on the wet day that ruins your boat plans.
The bus is more practical, the ferry more beautiful. The C10 leaves from the Piazza Matteotti bus station, beside Como Nord Lago station, reaches Cernobbio in fifteen to twenty minutes for a couple of euros, and runs frequently all year. The ferry crosses in about a quarter of an hour with the better view, but sailings are fewer and thin out off-season. The neat solution is to go by boat if the timetable allows and come back by bus, so you are never hostage to the last departure. Note that the C10 does not start from Como San Giovanni, the station Milan trains use, so walk down towards the lake first.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
Silkworms climb the stonework of this house. Mulberry leaves unfurl in the wrought iron of the balconies, and butterflies settle along the cornices. None of it is idle decoration. Davide Bernasconi built the villa in 1905-06 a few steps from his silk mills, and had the Milanese architect Alfredo Campanini work the life cycle of the caterpillar that had made him rich into every surface that would hold it. Few houses in Europe declare the source of their money quite so plainly. Since reopening as a museum in 2017, the villa has talked about itself in a distinctly odd way: no wall labels, no attendant keeping you at arm's length from the furniture. The house narrates in the first person, through letters, recorded voices and objects left exactly where somebody set them down, and you are expressly invited to open the drawers, rummage through the cupboards and lift an old telephone receiver to hear who answers. Children, consequently, do not wilt here the way they wilt in most museums, which by itself justifies wedging it into a family day on the lake. The logistics are the gentlest on Lake Como, and that is not a small virtue. Cernobbio lies about five kilometres from Como: the C10 bus leaves the Piazza Matteotti bus station and covers it in fifteen to twenty minutes for a couple of euros, and the ferry crosses in roughly a quarter of an hour, leaving a ten-minute stroll through town. No two-hour boat ride, no seasonal timetable roulette of the sort the far northern villas force on you. Watch the day, not the season. The museum opens four days a week only, Friday to Monday, 10am to 6pm, and closes Tuesday through Thursday. In exchange it stays open all year, a rare thing on a lake that shutters half its attractions in winter. Allow an hour to ninety minutes; admission is 10 euros. If you have only two days on the lake, the great garden villas come first. But with children in tow, or in the rain, or in a month when the northern ferries have stopped running, this is the smartest hour you can spend near Como.
No wall labels and no roped-off rooms: the villa speaks in the first person through letters and voices, and asks you to open its drawers and answer its telephone.
The Liberty ornament here is not abstract foliage but the full life cycle of the silkworm, mulberry leaf to butterfly, in tribute to the trade that made Como wealthy.
While the northern lake's sights close for winter, this museum runs year-round, Friday to Monday, twenty minutes from Como, which makes it the obvious refuge on a cold or rainy day.
Largo Campanini 2, 22012 Cernobbio (CO), Italy