HoteliersGuild Special Feature | Grand Hotel Tremezzo

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HOTELS

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Luxury was once a domain detached from sustainability. Now, a shift in our behaviour is imperative.

Let’s use our joint power to increase global environmental and social standards, and to play a key role in promoting a cultural shift! Is a grand palace hôtel more luxurious than a luxury tented camp? And can a palace hotel be operated sustainably?

Luxury, it seems, can be a small thing such as creating a meaningful experience or showing you care. But large or small, it should create an emotional connection with people, the product and the brand.

We keep defining the word luxury but ultimately it has to be defined by the guests. “luxury” should involve the extensive use of storytelling that is intimate and personal, with the serving of traditional food and use of recipes of the owner’s grandmother, stories that bring the hotel’s heritage to life, as well as involving the guest in the local traditions and culture.

1 Grand hôtel tremezzo Lago di como

Nestled in one of the world’s most majestic locations, Lake Como, the Grand Hotel Tremezzo is a staple on the luxury traveler’s holiday list.

It’s an idyllic picture to behold: an Art Nouveau palazzo with floor-to-ceiling views over the lake, where you’ll spot the hotel’s floating pool, water limousines crisscrossing the water, and the village of Bellagio in the distance. Grand Hotel Tremezzo is glamorous but not stuffy: bold colors infuse the interiors with youth and dynamism. Guests of the hotel are also able to stay in the 18th century Villa Sola Cabiati, a noble dwelling replete with Italian art.

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Vacation Like Italian Royalty at Lago di Como’s most glamorous hotel Arriving at Grand Hotel Tremezzo in Lake Como is like entering a true Italian fairytale. The five-star hotel is located right on the water in the tiny town it’s named after, surrounded by historic villas and old world charm.

“The key value at Grand Hotel Tremezzo is warm, Italian hospitality,” says owner, Valentina De Santis. She is the third generation in her family to run the hotel, which is a member of Preferred Hotels. During her time at the helm, De Santis has added modern suites and employed the same landscape architect George Clooney used for his own villa nearby to perfect the hotel… so it’s really just like you’re vacationing like royalty.

Grand Hotel Tremezzo, news 2021 Grand Hotel Tremezzo will be launching a brand new project in 2021, an e-commerce dedicated to the Made in Italy and to the memories of days spent at Lake Como. It will be a treasure chest of Italian glamor.

The 2021 reopening date is fixed on March 31st.

Following the recent acquisition by the De Santis family of the historical Villa Passalacqua, in Moltrasio (Lake Como), the 2021 will be dedicated to its restoration to reopen, brighter than ever, in 2022. The Villa, a magnificent 18th century residence, is an Italian national monument and one of the finest luxury properties flanking the jet-set shores of Lake Como. The Villa has played host to some of the world’s most brilliant musicians, artists, writers and statesmen, including Napoleon Bonaparte, Vincenzo Bellini and Winston Churchill. Its majestic sevenacre gardens descend from high up on the hill down to the private dock on the lake with eight stunning terraces featuring a panoramic swimming pool, eleven working fountains, an olive grove and a 200-year-old greenhouse.

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IN VILLA VERITAS Valentina de Santis - Grand Hotel Tremezzo, news 2021 Grand Hotel Tremezzo will be launching a brand new project in 2021, an e-commerce dedicated to the Made in Italy and to the memories of days spent at Lake Como. It will be a treasure chest of Italian glamor.

The 2021 reopening date is fixed on March 31st.

Following the recent acquisition by the De Santis family of the historical Villa Passalacqua, in Moltrasio (Lake Como), the 2021 will be dedicated to its restoration to reopen, brighter than ever, in 2022. The Villa, a magnificent 18th century residence, is an Italian national monument and one of the finest luxury properties flanking the jet-set shores of Lake Como. The Villa has played host to some of the world’s most brilliant musicians, artists, writers and statesmen, including Napoleon Bonaparte, Vincenzo Bellini and Winston Churchill. Its majestic sevenacre gardens descend from high up on the hill down to the private dock on the lake with eight stunning terraces featuring a panoramic swimming pool, eleven working fountains, an olive grove and a 200-year-old greenhouse.

the main building feels

Villa Sola Cabiati in Lake Como May Be The Most Romantic Spot in Italy the historic residence of once belonging to the noble Serbelloni family, is now exclusively available to guests of the nearby Grand Hotel Tremezzo.

“Our family has always been in touch with the noble family that owns the Villa,” says Valentina De Santis, CEO of Grand Hotel Tremezzo. “Last year, while chatting with a good cup of coffee we started evaluating a collaboration with the focus of giving Villa Sola Cabiati a sort of revival.”

perfectly frozen in time…

The space is richly appointed with immaculate frescos by the Tiepolo school that haven’t been touched since the 1700s, mosaico venezia floors, and exquisite glass chandeliers. Hotel guests can book a private 2 hour visit to the villa’s museum floors, which host a number of treasures including a collection of Sèvres china, a bust of Napoleon (a gift from the French ruler himself), and a bed from Palazzo Serbelloni in Milan that Napoleon and his wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais, once slept in.

Inside a Grand Hôtel

Greta Garbo said the Tremezzo was one of her favourite hotels in the world, her ‘sunny, happy place’. In her spirit, fling open the bedroom shutters of Suite Greta, look out over the ravishing setting of Lake Como and wholeheartedly embrace the indulgence. To sit on the terrace and sip a glass of chilled Franciacorta while drinking in those views is to be in hotel heaven. With its gilded, draped and upholstered grandeur, and hundreds of sparkling windows, this is one of Lake Como’s old-school greats. The star swimming pool floats on the lake, but another glorious pool lies tucked away in the gardens, surrounded by towering palms and banana plants, a heavenly space ornamented with statuary and vines, where a great stone staircase cascades down to the water’s edge. The spa housed in the 18th-century Villa Emilia has impressive treatments; equally restorative is time spent taking in the views from the relaxation area. Like Garbo, you will want to be left alone – to revel in the grandest comfort zone.

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Lake Como has been an escape from urban life for Italians since Roman times, but Enea Gandola took it one step further in 1910 by opening this, Como's most palatial hotel.

On the ground floor, the hotel plays to its traditional strengths with a series of salons and terraces facing the lake - and you'll still find a billiard table and a library, while the reception rooms have been pepped up with furniture in striking sherbet colours.

Of the 98 rooms and suites, the most prestigious is the Greta - named after Ms Garbo - which has two bedrooms and a large terrace.

There are three swimming pools, including one on the lake surrounded by an artificial beach.

Superstar chef Gualtiero Marchesi, who has three Michelin stars, oversees the main restaurant.

There's also a fondue restaurant and a pizzeria on the lake during the summer months.

Why is Lake Como forever going to be a dream destination for people?

“It’s very much like taking a step back in time when you arrive here. The shores are untouched for decades—you see beautiful villas and gardens. At the same time, it has reinvented itself in the last 5 to 10 years, attracting a new, younger crowd. This has pushed us to keep investing to make the destination look good, cool, and appealing with great food, experiences, and things to do. It’s this mix of past and present—with the feeling that it’s the place to be— that makes it very unique.”

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What does the Italian spirit of hospitality mean to you? It does somehow feel different.

It’s something we very much have in our DNA. So many of the Italian hotels that are legendary and inspiring in the travel industry are family owned. There are many famous, iconic hotels—especially in the luxury segment, but it’s actually all over the hospitality industry—that still belong to families. It’s a big part of the offering that Italy has. All of the families like us that still own a place like this put a lot of passion, effort, and entrepreneurial spirit into it. This is part of our culture, so even outside of hospitality when you’re just with friends, Italians are very warm and hospitable.

If someone came to the hotel—what is the one dish you recommend they eat?

One unmissable dish is our rice with gold, our signature dish at La Terrazza. We started to work in 2011 with Gualtiero Marchesi [who died in 2017]. He was the first Italian chef to get three Michelin stars and one of the fathers of Italian cuisine. His most popular, iconic dish is this rice with gold. The dish is very rooted in our Italian tradition. In the end, it’s a perfectly executed saffron risotto but the overall experience is what it looks like, the preparation, the philosophy.

It’s served on a round black plate, and then the very bright yellow risotto and a square of gold leaf. It’s not just satisfying your taste, but your eyes. You eat it with a gold spoon and at the end, you receive a certificate because the number of risottos served are counted.

If you want to be more simple, you cannot miss the pizza!

If you’re not in Lake Como, where else do you love going in Italy?

I love all of Italy, so it’s hard to pick a place like Amalfi, Capri, Sicily, Tuscany— there is not a place that I don’t love to be. But now that I have a family and two kids, Puglia has a very special place in my heart. I go every year, and now I spend a longer time there with my kids. It is a region that offers so much—a beautiful seaside, fantastic people, food that is out of this world, many villages to explore, culture. It’s a little bit more on the beaten path, though it has very much been an emerging part of Italy in the last few years.

It was a family secret for years, a sweet secret that was handed down though three generations. As a little girl, every so often I would listen to Grandpa Batt as he reminisced about these few, yet mysterious, sheets of paper, pages which guests had filled with memories of days spent at the Grand Hotel Tremezzo in the early 1900s. My grandfather had collected their tales, guarding them jealously. Only he new the wonders they contained.

When I would ask what was in them, Bat, a man of bygone times, told me I would just have to wait. The love that filled thous memories, the romanticism that inspired them, and, at times, the heartache and the desire that burned through them, were precious treasure chests to discover once I’d grown. It made waiting for adulthood seem worth it…

The

Celebrating 100

opening on July 10 1910

Years

The opening on July 10 1910

Arriving in Style!

1905, the Gandola's family, who built the hotel

Fine dining restaurant serving the great Gualtiero Marchesi’s signature dishes on the most beautiful terrace on Lake Como.

…a tribute to the flavours of the local area The Grand Hotel Tremezzo carries on its tradition in true gourmet style, by collaborating with the biggest name in modern Italian cuisine: Gualtiero Marchesi.

Seducing guests with virtuoso menus that are light and full of character – a tribute to the flavours of the local area in the romantic setting of “La Terrazza” restaurant - without a shadow of a doubt the most beautiful on Lake Como.

Dreams

PASSION FOR SUSTAINABLE LUXURY AFFILIATION BY INVITATION ONLY

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CUISINE

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At HoteliersGuild we are proud to

count with the support of some of the

most established Chefs around the globe.

We promote ‘Sustainable Cuisine’ as an environmentally sustainable food system t h a t u s e s fo o d p r o d u c t s g r ow n , harvested, processed, packaged and shipped or distributed with the minimal environmental impact. These boundaries typically mean of course products meeting the criteria are local or organic, wherever possible. Whether it's cooking green or reducing food waste, everyone can and should take steps toward having a sustainable kitchen and help to take better care of our planet. Even ten years ago, the idea of sustainability wasn’t taken so seriously. But, sustainability and consciousness about the environment among the general population has increased and the idea has become global today.

La Terrazza |Grand Hotel Tremezzo

Chef Osvaldo Presazzi

Chefs Extraordinaires

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O OsvaldoPresazzi

Following a recommendation from his friend, the sculptor Nicola Salvatore, Gualtiero Marchesi visited The Grand Hotel Tremezzo in 2011 and, according to legend, fell in love. The maestro saw in this gracious historic hotel an opportunity to open his dream restaurant and kitchen, developing a friendship and eventual partnership with the De Santis family, current owners of the hotel. Marchesi continued something of a residency at the Tremezzo, working closely with its chef, Osvaldo Presazzi, on crafting the hotel’s fresh, seasonal dishes. When the maestro passed away in the winter of 2017, the hotel, determined to honor his wishes and culinary legacy, redesigned the kitchen.

Under Presazzi, the menu honors the late chef’s legacy by offering signature dishes like red and black spaghetti with caviar, veal fillet with foie gras and black truffle, Marchesi’s famous saffron risotto topped with 23-karat gold leaf and a tasting menu adapted to the changing seasons. “Since the moment I met him in autumn 2010, my way of cooking was revolutionized,” says Presazzi. “Little by little, I began to embrace Marchesi’s principles,” he explains, recognizing the late chef’s emphasis on the importance of local, seasonal ingredients and cooking techniques native to Northern Italy. “He passed down a great respect of ingredients in made-to-order dishes,” says Presazzi, who, in addition to his work at the GHT, has collaborated with the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, Hôtel Martinez and La Palme d’Or restaurants in Cannes and the Four Seasons Hotel in Milan. Presazzi says the new kitchen has enhanced the cooking experience for chefs—almost all stations now overlook the water—and inspires tours of its kitchen.

“We are no longer just the behind-the-scenes team, we now interact with our guests,” he says. Today, La Terrazza Gualtiero Marchesi is the only restaurant in Italy to offer Marchesi’s signature dishes.

PHILOSPHY “ I have proudly and humbly adopted Gualtiero Marchesi’s philosophy ‘Form is matter’, and we developed the permanent revolution upon this statement. A conceptual revolution that, once understood, is far from being belligerent, and is sweet rather, if not obvious.

As he said, if food is life, the most natural of conditions will be equally divided between desire and emotion.

The desire to understand, to learn, capturing the essential and more, but also the emotion, abandonment, every time that food is capable of meeting the necessities of hunger and the pleasure of dining room.

Whenever knowledge, need and pleasure are aligned in the same direction, it happens that our idea of tastiness finds its inseparable half and that is the idea of beauty. “

Chef Osvaldo & Gualtiero Marchesi

RESTAURANT Under Presazzi, the menu honors the late chef’s legacy by offering signature dishes like red and black spaghetti with caviar, veal fillet with foie gras and black truffle, Marchesi’s famous saffron risotto topped with 23-karat gold leaf and a tasting menu adapted to the changing seasons. “Since the moment I met him in autumn 2010, my way of cooking was revolutionized,” says Presazzi. “Little by little, I began to embrace Marchesi’s principles,” he explains, recognizing the late chef’s emphasis on the importance of local, seasonal ingredients and cooking techniques native to Northern Italy.

“He passed down a great respect of ingredients in made-toorder dishes,” says Presazzi, who, in addition to his work at the GHT, has collaborated with the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, Hôtel Martinez and La Palme d’Or restaurants in Cannes and the Four Seasons Hotel in Milan. Presazzi says the new kitchen has enhanced the cooking experience for chefs— almost all stations now overlook the water—and inspires tours of its kitchen. “We are no longer just the behind-thescenes team, we now interact with our guests,” he says.

Today, La Terrazza Gualtiero Marchesi is the only restaurant in Italy to offer Marchesi’s signature dishes.

* What type of food, and what influences your dishes?

It’s such a great honour to being in charge of the only restaurant in the world with a menu exclusively featuring the iconic Marchesi dishes that revolutionized Italian cuisine, making it the center of international attention: from Rice and gold and Open ravioli to Grand Antipasto of fish, lobster and maccheroni, Pollockinspired dripping and Red and Black

in homage of Fontana…Marchesi actually called them, “works of art”, that evolve with the seasons. At La Terrazza Gualtiero Marchesi we celebrate the unassailable expertise of the Great Maestro of Italian cuisine and we honor his talent by keeping his precious heritage alive.

* ‘Food’ for you is…? …the cornerstone of Italian culture and at our iconic hotel we strive to offer guests the opportunity to experience a gastronomic treasure trove of signature dishes, inspirational flavours and local ingredients under the direction of ‘the founder of modern Italian cuisine’ Gualtiero Marchesi…

* ‘Commitment’ & ‘Pride’ means… ? …that over the years we developed a fruitful partnership between Marchesi’s students. With constancy and commitment, Daniel Canzian, Brendan Becht, Tiziano Rossetti and, in the past three years, Antonio Ghilardi have imparted the philosophy of Marchesi cookery to the Grand Hotel brigade; a philosophy the greatest representatives of modern Italian cuisine were trained in, including Carlo Cracco, Enrico Crippa, Pietro Leemann, Davide Oldani, Andrea Berton and Ernst Knam, which makes us proud!

GrandHotelTremezzo

proud venue of 2021

LeadingHôteliéres annual gala !

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RESTAURANTS:

Lasarte - Paolo Casagrande & Martin Berasategui PURE Berlin Antonio BACHOR RENÉ FRANK - Berlin KONSTANTIN FILIPPOU, Vienna La Terrazza, Lake Como

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Institut Paul MasonRose, London

etc.

Heleri Rande NOBLE CAUSES…

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