· 5 min read · by Salimar Boat Tour
Villa Palatina, Remo Ruffini's house on Lake Como
Cruising past the Como lakefront you notice a group of pale buildings set in greenery, with a swimming pool looking over the water. That is Villa Palatina, home of Remo Ruffini, the man who turned Moncler from a struggling company into a multibillion-euro brand. It is not a famous historic villa like Villa d'Este or Balbianello: it is a private house, and its fame is recent, born in the fashion and design press.
Where it is
In the city of Como, directly on the lakefront, in the same town where Ruffini was born in 1961 and grew up. Many guides place it in Cernobbio: that is wrong. There is no public address, and rightly so: it is a private home.
The story: a 19th-century villa, four houses in one
The building dates to the 19th century, but the original architect and commissioner are not documented in any public source: it does not appear in the catalogues of historic Como villas. Ruffini bought it in 1987, fairly run-down, after selling his first fashion brand, New England.
The real change came twenty years later. Between 2009 and 2011 Ruffini asked Paris studio Gilles & Boissier — Patrick Gilles and Dorothee Boissier — to weave four separate structures into a single home and redesign house and gardens. The same studio later designed his yacht, Moncler's headquarters and the brand's boutiques worldwide.
What it looks like
- A compound of four residences joined into one house
- Italian marble floors and preserved frescoes
- Custom-designed Moroccan rugs and contemporary art
- Landscaped gardens and a pool overlooking the lake
Number of rooms, square metres, length of the shoreline: never published. Anyone quoting those figures is making them up.
Can you visit it?
No. Villa Palatina is the private residence of the Ruffini family: not a hotel, not a rental, not an event venue. You can only see it from the water — and the lake is exactly where it reveals itself, because from the road it is almost invisible.
Curiosities
Ruffini often says he "was born on a boat". In nearly every magazine shoot of the villa you will spot Ulisse, his Weimaraner. Besides Villa Palatina he owns a restored brutalist chalet in St Moritz, a Milan pied-a-terre and a 55-metre superyacht, Atlante.
