The villa is new, very bright and fresh. The views over the lake are gorgeous. Fixtures and fittings are pretty and work well, and the shower pressure is excellent. The kitchen is equipped with pretty much everything we needed to cook meals. Mattresses are very comfortable. We chose to stay here in Pianello so that we could get more space for our money (villas further south were much more expensive) and it was an easy 25 min journey down to Menaggio and beyond. This is a very quiet residential area which is what we wanted. Lovely restaurant/bar about 2 minutes away on the water.

The villa address provided is incorrect and will take you to a street further down the hill, so check this against the pin that the host sends you, especially if you hire airport transfer through booking.com as the driver will be given the wrong address. The listing states that there is a path from the road to the villa, which is true. What it doesn’t say, is that this path is incredibly steep and genuinely treacherous - an uneven rocky pack without handrails or guards. We weren’t made aware of this until the day of our arrival when the host sent us a video of how to find the accommodation. We are fit and in our late thirties/early forties and even we struggled, especially when arriving and departing with our luggage. At one point on this path you’ll cross a huge hole in the rock which drops a long way down to a stream and there is no guard or handrail over this section. There is no lighting along the path either, so we used the torches on our phones to get back safely at night. On our departure day there was a huge thunderstorm which meant navigating the path down with heavy luggage in the pouring rain, with a tree blocking some of the path due to the storm. We nearly brought our parents on to is holiday and thank god we didn’t because there’s no way they would have been able to negotiate the path safely. There is no welcome/information booklet at the villa, which would have saved a lot of time and hassle texting the villa manager to ask questions about the WiFi, aircon, kitchen equipment, etc. Just a simple welcome pack explaining how everything works and where to find things would have been a simple and helpful detail. The air conditioning in the bedrooms is effective (or it was until about 7 days into our 10 day stay, at which point it stopped working) but the rest of the villa has no aircon. We visited in August when the temperature was 30°C+ every day, and the villa, which has floor to ceiling windows over most of the walls, was sweltering.