Carved into the forested hillside above Cadenabbia on Lake Como's western shore, a late nineteenth-century neoclassical villa with rusticated stone arcades stretching directly into the water gave Mandarin Oriental Lake Como its defining architectural identity when the property opened in 2021. The villa's lakeside elevation — arched loggias at water level, terraced gardens climbing toward a tower visible above the treeline — is precisely the kind of Lombard aristocratic composition that has drawn northern European money and imagination to this lake for two centuries. Studio Jouin Manku, the Paris-based practice led by Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku, handled the interiors across the hotel's 76 rooms and suites, threading a contemporary residential sensibility through the historical envelope without dismantling it. Inside, the guest rooms show oak parquet in a warm honey tone, diamond-quilted leather headboards in tan, and arched French doors that frame the lake and mountains as if each balcony were a considered composition rather than an afterthought. The restaurant reads against terrazzo floors flecked in grey and green, oval dark-stone dining tables, and sage-green panelled walls beneath brass pendant lighting with a handcrafted reed quality — a palette that sits closer to a sophisticated Milanese apartment than a conventional hotel dining room. The lakeside pool deck, laid in iroko or teak planking and set flush against the historic stone balustrade, places the water of the pool in direct conversation with the lake itself, the geometry spare enough to let the Alpine backdrop do the necessary work.

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