Boat tours

From our private dock, Lake Como becomes your own

At VILLA AURELAGO · Lago di Como, the lake is not a view kept at a distance.

It begins just beyond the terrace, at the far end of the garden, right in front of our own dock.

An espresso finished in the morning, a linen shirt in the afternoon, or a chilled bottle of Franciacorta carried down before dusk — from the door of the house to the water takes only a few minutes. Then you step aboard, and Lake Como becomes the road you travel today.

Two boats wait at the dock, and they could not differ more in character.

One carries you back to the most captivating of Italian golden ages.

The other takes you into the rhythm of contemporary Italian luxury.

BYBLOS

1965 Riva Ariston

An Italian golden age, afloat on Lake Como.

Step aboard Byblos and time seems to slow.

This 1965 Riva Ariston carries a mahogany hull the years have only made more beautiful. Sunlight settles on coat after coat of lacquer, warm as a mirror, and the reflection of the water runs slowly along the gunwale. It is an elegance that asks for no ornament at all.

Leather, wood, metal and those classic lines answer one another. Nothing is shown off, yet a single glance tells you what Italian Elegance actually means.

It recalls the Italy of the sixties — the Grand Hotels along the shore, sharply cut suits, silk scarves, dark glasses, the stars of old films, and the lake wind that undid your hair as the boat pulled away in the afternoon.

To ride on Byblos is not simply to move from one place to another.

It is closer to stepping out of today, back into an age when travel still carried a sense of ceremony.

The captain eases the throttle forward, the Riva skims the surface, and the roofs of Bellagio, the old villas on the shore, the shadow of the mountains and the bell towers open one after another beside you.

Some journeys exist in order to arrive.

Byblos exists for the going itself.

It is not a boat built to chase speed.

It is a bearing — an Italian taste that half a century has not overtaken.

CRANCHI A46 LUXURY TENDER

Contemporary Italian luxury, redrawn from the water

If Byblos is Lake Como's yesterday, the Cranchi A46 Luxury Tender belongs to the Lago di Como of today.

Sharp, sensual, contemporary — and entirely without effort.

The low, fluid line of the hull carries an almost automotive tension across the water, and the wide open deck leaves hardly a border between sunlight, lake wind and the surface itself.

Sitting on the sofa at the stern, what lies before you is not an enclosed cabin but the whole of Lake Como.

Friends talk beside the bar, the champagne in the ice bucket slowly beading with water, music playing quietly while the slopes of Bellagio draw nearer in the distance.

Stop when you feel like stopping.

Swim, and simply go over the side.

Ask for a quiet cove and the captain will hold the boat among the mountains, until the whole lake belongs to no one but you and the people you came with.

This is not a yacht cruise in the traditional sense.

It is closer to a lounge that moves across the water.

Coffee in Varenna in the morning; lunch on the water, moored near Villa del Balbianello in the afternoon; and as the sun begins to colour the rock face, a slow return along the shore to Griante.

By day, it is freedom.

At dusk, it is romance.

And before night falls, it becomes the most beguiling private salon on Lake Como.

What the Cranchi A46 Luxury Tender stands for is not only luxury.

It is a way of living you only begin to understand once you have actually lived beside the lake —

there is nowhere you have to be today,

because the lake itself is the destination.