“Every step I have taken in my life has led me here, now,” says Paolo De Santis, reading the words on a stone slab that marks the threshold of the two wings of Villa Mondolfo on Lake Como. The villa is home to three generations of the De Santis family, and to walk across the work by the artist Alberto Garutti and into this house is to enter their world. Inside is a large carpet collaged from salvaged offcuts by the Italian conceptual artist Flavio Favelli and a chandelier reconfigured from an array of vintage pieces hangs from the ceiling. “Look at how beautifully all the parts are intertwined,” says De Santis, a smartly dressed 70-something.
We wanted to share the the experience of living with art in a home, where you can admire the work in peace
The various properties of the family, who have lived in Como for generations, mirror the qualities of Favelli’s art as they revive the old to create something new. Paolo, his wife Antonella and their 43-year-old daughter Valentina are accomplished hoteliers with an impressive track record in bringing Como’s heritage buildings back to life. In the mid-1970s, Paolo’s father-in-law turned the Grand Hotel Tremezzo on Lake Como, purpose built for the leisure classes in 1910, into a chic, five-star property, and in 2022 the family opened Passalacqua in a 1787 neo-classical villa. It has gone on to be garlanded with awards.
Casabianca by Antonella Corengia. Courtesy Casabianca
Their latest venture is Casabianca, a villa designed by Piero Ponci for a wealthy textile manufacturer in 1930, which looks over Como’s quayside. In the De Santises’ hands it has become a stealth hotel, with three beautifully designed apartment-style suites on the top floor, which will be launched later this year.
Its three other floors are already open to paying visitors (entrance costs €15) and filled with around 50 works from their collection of post-war Italian art in a domestic setting. “We wanted to share the experience of living with art in a home, where you can admire the work in peace,” says Antonella De Santis, who celebrated her 70th birthday here late last year with friends and family, the evening before it invited the public in.
All the artists of the Arte Povera
“We have almost all the artists of Arte Povera in our collection: Alighiero Boetti, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jannis Kounellis, Gilberto Zorio,” Paolo De Santis says. Many were friends of the couple, and the collection is deeply personal. “Massimo Bartolini made that to mark his 50th birthday in 2012,” he says, pointing to a black enamel-on-aluminium disc with 50 notches scored into its perimeter. “We had to have it.” A site-specific work by Paolini called Habitat (2025) connects Casabianca and Villa Mondolfo: four plaster busts placed in the centre of Casabianca’s airy entrance hall are surrounded by framed photos of the family’s lakeside home. A bronze bonsai, called Trees & Roots (2011), by the 2003 Venice Biennale Golden Lion winner Su-Mei Tse, is planted beside the staircase.
From left: Valentina, Paolo and Antonella De Santis. Courtesy Casabianca
The couple were first encouraged to acquire art by their late friend and fellow Como resident, the mid-century designer Ico Parisi and his wife Luisa. “We met them when we’d just got married and were living in a smaller house in the hills,” Paolo De Santis says. “We bought our first piece of art in their atelier: La Ruota (the wheel). Ico and Luisa were the ones who opened our eyes to how we could make our home look beautiful.” They later returned the favour, commissioning Parisi to design the Happiness Fountain mural in the garden at the Grand Hotel Tremezzo—a vibrant woman’s face in brilliantly coloured glass mosaic.
Art meets design
Throughout Casabianca’s generous rooms, art meets design, with carpets by Gio Ponti and tables and chairs by Paolo Buffa. Mostly from 1930 onwards and the height of good Italian taste, much of the furniture has been sourced at the biannual vintage fair in Parma, though the occasional reproduction has been slipped in to maintain the period feeling, along with Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural Taliesin Floor Lamps, designed in 1933 and composed of stacked wooden boxes. “We’d like visitors to enjoy the art in a slower way, like you might at home,” Paolo De Santis explains. “They’re invited to take a book off the shelf and sit for a while. I don’t want people to feel like they’re in a museum, but in a beautiful house where they can linger. Beauty helps us live well and also helps us see the world in a slightly less aggressive way.”
Alfredo Jaar’s 2018 neon sign, Si ballava e ancora si sperava. Courtesy Casabianca
Visitors are invited to take a book off the shelves and sit for a while. I don’t want it to feel like a museum
While the couple claim that there are no curators at Casabianca, they are inadvertently presenting their first show and demonstrating the quality of a collection that keeps growing in scale and diversity. A photograph by Marina Abramović (Holding Emptiness, 2012) with the artist dressed in black, eyes closed, is part of an important series called With Eyes Closed I see Happiness. A significant sculpture by Anselm Kiefer, Paete (2000)—wild, wiry hair exploding from a plaster form—occupies an upstairs room. Alfredo Jaar’s neon sign from 2018—Si ballava e ancora si sperava, or “still dancing, still hoping—shines in brilliant blue.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Floor Lamp (1933); furniture by Paolo Buffa and carpets by Gio Ponti feature throughout Casabianca. Courtesy Casabianca
For those seeking more earthly pleasures, these experts in hospitality have also formed a partnership with the historic Milanese patisserie, Cova. (The first one opened in 1817; LVMH acquired a major stake in 2013.) In the wood-and mirror-panelled restaurant and bar, pancakes, tramezzini and omelettes are on offer all day, along with exquisite cakes and coffee. And there is, quite literally, no better place in Como to enjoy an early evening Negroni. This is a different kind of white house, dedicated to pleasure and art.
More information at casabiancacomo.com
