Above: View from Duplex Villa plunge pool, Nihi Sumba - READ MCKENDREE

14 Previous Hideaways of the Year

As we compiled this year’s Editors’ Choice Awards, we took great pleasure in reminiscing about our stays at previous Hideaways of the Year. The properties below remain as enticing as ever, and we would return to any of them given the slightest excuse.

Last year: Passalacqua

Lake Como, Italy

Fiat-style golf cart in the gardens, Passalacqua, Lake Como - Andrew Harper editor

Our winner last year was Passalacqua, a gorgeously refurbished 18th-century palace set on manicured gardens that are terraced down to Lake Como. The huge main villa contains just 12 sumptuous accommodations. Eight additional rooms are in the Palazz building above the Moroccan-inspired spa, which is itself above an atmospheric grotto. And four Casa al Lago guest rooms form a little enclave of their own down in the gardens. The small room count and highly professional but good-humored staff foster a convivial house-party atmosphere. And yet it is also easy to find quiet private space, whether in one of the opulent lounges and salons or beside the Como-view pool. Accommodations manage to balance unabashed opulence, historic character and contemporary comfort. Opened in 2022, family-owned Passalacqua has raised the bar on luxury-saturated Lake Como. Other resorts are extravagant and other resorts are intimate, but I am unaware of any on Como that are so thoroughly both.

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