Carlo Felice Soave drew up the plans for this neoclassical villa in the eighteenth century, and for most of its life it was exactly what it looked like: a private estate of extraordinary consequence, set into seven terraced acres above Lake Como at Moltrasio. When the De Santis family transformed it into Passalacqua in June 2022, after three years of meticulous restoration, they made a deliberate choice not to correct the centuries out of it. The interiors, guided by San Francisco-based BAMO under Principal Emeritus Pamela Babey and shaped by owner Valentina De Santis working alongside local Italian artisans, carry the feeling of rooms that have always been lived in rather than designed for spectacle. Vaulted ceilings carry original frescoes in dusty rose and sage. Gilded Baroque headboards and Louis XVI chairs sit on faded Persian carpets. Murano glass chandeliers and trunk-style bed chests in ivory with brass fittings add layers that feel accumulated rather than curated. The twenty-four suites are distributed across three historic structures — the main villa, the former stables known as the Palazz, and the lakeside Casa al Lago — which means the property has genuine architectural variety rather than a single repeated gesture. From above, the formal parterre garden with its striped pavilions and cypress sentinels extends toward the lake in a composition that Soave would still recognize. The oval pool terrace, ringed with lotus-shaped umbrellas in green and white, arrives as something newer in spirit, but even there the mountains and the water do most of the work.

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