· 6 min read · by Salimar Boat Tour
Villa Troubetzkoy in Blevio, the villa with the pointed turret
It is one of the most recognisable villas in the first basin: a tall pointed hexagonal turret, steep roofs and dormer windows that make it look like a Swiss castle that ended up on Lake Como by mistake. It stands in Blevio, on a promontory facing Cernobbio, Villa d'Este and Villa Erba. In the village it has always been "the house of the seven dwarfs".
The prince who blew up the shoreline
The villa was built around 1848-1850 by Russian prince Alexander Vasilyevich Troubetzkoy (1813-1889). There was not enough flat ground on the shore, so he had a rural building demolished and dynamited the rock at water level to create the platform to build on. Hence the nickname the locals gave him: "turbascogli", the rock-breaker.
The Maria Taglioni mistake every guide repeats
The story you hear on boats is that the prince built the villa as a gift for his lover, the ballerina Maria Taglioni, who lived in the villa next door. It is a conflation. On 24 November 1852 Alexander Troubetzkoy married Eugenie-Marie Gilbert de Voisins, who was Maria Taglioni's daughter: the ballerina was therefore his mother-in-law, not his lover. They had five children and lived between the lake villa and their Paris residence.
It is true that Maria Taglioni lived on the lake, in what is today Villa Usuelli. Another legend worth correcting is the one that makes him the exiled Decembrist prince: that was Sergei Troubetzkoy, a different man.
From abandonment to restoration
In the 20th century the estate passed to the Pozzi family of Milan — hence the nickname "Villa Pozzi" — and was later split among different owners, ending up abandoned. In 2009 it was discovered by Pascal Cagni, the French entrepreneur who had been Apple's vice president and general manager for Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa from 2000 to 2012, appointed by Steve Jobs.
The Cagni family bought back the pieces of the estate — divided among six owners — between 2011 and 2016, then began a restoration that took nearly ten years with Italian craftsmen. Today the villa is the flagship of the C4 Collection and is rented for private stays from 250,000 euros a week.
What it looks like
- Five buildings: the main villa with 11 bedrooms, the reception villa at road level, the spa, the former chapel and the chalet
- A swimming pool carved into the rock
- The former chapel turned into a library with foldaway beds
- The old greenhouse turned into a suite: its glass ceiling is the bottom of the pool above, so from the bed you watch people swimming
- An external lift connecting the shore to the Lariana road
- Gardens by Emilio Trabella, with palms, rose gardens, century-old cedars and a nymphaeum
How to see it
From the road you see almost nothing: only the entrance building at the top. The villa reveals itself from the water, and it is among the first you meet leaving Como towards Torno. We pass in front of Blevio on every tour of the first basin.
