CASABIANCA: Como's New Temple of Contemporary Art

There is a particular kind of light in Como. It reflects off the lake, bounces between the mountains, and fills interiors with a quality that painters have chased for centuries. It is precisely this light that floods the rooms of CASABIANCA, the newest cultural destination on Lake Como and perhaps its most personal.

Opened in late 2024, CASABIANCA is the passion project of Paolo and Antonella De Santis — a name that will resonate with anyone who has experienced the legendary hospitality of Grand Hotel Tremezzo or the intimate perfection of Passalacqua, consistently ranked among the world's finest hotels. Now the family has turned their discerning eye from hospitality to art, creating something that defies easy categorisation: part private collection, part house-museum, part living salon.

A 1930s Villa Reborn

The building itself tells a story of reinvention. Designed by architect Piero Ponci in the 1930s for a prominent textile industrialist family, the villa has lived many lives — private residence, corporate showroom, bank headquarters. Each incarnation left its mark, but none quite suited the building's elegant bones.

Under the De Santis family's stewardship, the villa has returned to its original purpose as a home, albeit one where the residents are works of art rather than people. Spread across three floors and fifteen rooms, CASABIANCA feels remarkably domestic. There are no institutional corridors, no climate-controlled white cubes. Instead, paintings hang where paintings should hang — above fireplaces, beside windows, in conversation with the lake views beyond.

The Collection: Forty Years of Passion

What distinguishes CASABIANCA from conventional museums is its deeply personal nature. The approximately fifty works on display represent over forty years of collecting by Paolo and Antonella De Santis, acquired not through curatorial strategy but through instinct, emotion, and the particular moment each piece entered their lives.

The emphasis falls on Italian contemporary art of the past half-century, with particular depth in Arte Povera — that influential movement that emerged from Turin and Milan in the late 1960s, challenging the commercialisation of art through humble materials and profound concepts. Here you will encounter works by Michelangelo Pistoletto, whose mirror pieces shatter the boundary between art and viewer; Jannis Kounellis, master of industrial poetry; Mario Merz with his luminous igloos; and Alighiero Boetti's intricate embroidered maps.

The scope extends beyond Italy's borders. Anselm Kiefer's monumental explorations of memory and mythology find space here, as do William Kentridge's animated meditations on history and Marina Abramovic's investigations of presence. Emilio Vedova's gestural explosions share walls with Giulio Paolini's cerebral compositions.

Art Without Barriers

Perhaps the most radical aspect of CASABIANCA is what it lacks: labels, placards, arrows, suggested routes. The De Santis family deliberately rejected the apparatus of conventional museums, preferring instead to let works speak for themselves and visitors find their own way.

"We like the idea that visitors can take their time," the family explains, "perhaps read an art book, observe and breathe in the space." This is not art as education or entertainment, but art as environment — something to be inhabited rather than consumed.

The curatorial philosophy mirrors the family's approach to their hotels: creating spaces where guests feel not like visitors but like welcomed friends. At CASABIANCA, this translates to an experience closer to visiting a private collection than touring an institution.

Cova: Milan's Legendary Pasticceria Arrives on Lake Como

The ground floor of CASABIANCA houses what may be the most distinguished cafe to open on Lake Como in decades: an outpost of Pasticceria Cova, the storied Milanese institution founded in 1817.

For over two centuries, Cova has occupied its legendary address on Via Montenapoleone — Milan's most exclusive shopping street — where generations of fashionistas, opera-goers, and discerning Milanesi have gathered for espresso, aperitivo, and exquisite pastries. The pasticceria's reputation extends far beyond Italy: satellite locations in Paris, Monaco, and across Asia have introduced Cova's refined traditions to an international clientele.

Now, Como joins this rarefied company. Cova Casabianca offers the full experience: immaculate pastries displayed like jewels, perfectly pulled espresso, and that particular atmosphere of unhurried elegance that the original has cultivated for generations. The setting — art-filled rooms overlooking the lake — elevates even a simple coffee into something ceremonial.

Come for breakfast and linger over a brioche. Return for afternoon tea with Cova's celebrated mignon pastries. Or time your visit for aperitivo, when the light softens over the water and the boundary between art gallery and salon dissolves entirely. This is, in the family's words, "a place to sip time" — and with Cova's pedigree, time has never tasted so refined.

Looking Ahead: The Suites

In 2026, CASABIANCA will expand its offerings with three suites on the top floor — an evolution that seems inevitable given the De Santis family's hospitality heritage. One imagines waking surrounded by masterworks, taking breakfast with a Kiefer, watching sunset from rooms where art and life blur completely.

Planning Your Visit

CASABIANCA represents a new model for experiencing art on Lake Como — intimate, unhurried, and deeply considered. For those whose travels are shaped by culture as much as landscape, it offers something genuinely distinctive: a chance to see how one of Italy's great collecting families lives with the art they love.

Combine a morning at CASABIANCA with a passeggiata through Como's silk-weaving quarter, lunch at one of the city's historic trattorias, and perhaps a late-afternoon ferry to Bellagio. Or make it part of a broader art itinerary: Villa Olmo's exhibitions, the rationalist architecture of Como's Fascist-era buildings, the medieval frescoes scattered through lakeside churches.

However you approach it, CASABIANCA rewards the kind of slow, attentive looking that Lake Como itself demands.

Practical Information

Address: Via Lungo Lario Trento 47, 22100 Como

Hours: Tue 15:00-18:00; Wed-Sun 10:00-18:00; Closed Monday*

Tickets: €15 full price; €10 reduced (ages 15-24); Free under 14

Website: casabiancacomo.com

Tip: Visit on a weekday morning. Allow 90 minutes, then enjoy Cova pastries overlooking the lake.

*Hours and prices may change. Verify on official website before visiting.