Tour Villa Balbiano

Villa Balbiano was already famous before The Devil Wears Prada 2. It had been Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio’s baroque summer residence on the western shore of Lake Como since the late 1500s. It had played Patrizia Reggiani’s villa in House of Gucci. Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep didn’t put it on the map. They confirmed what people who walk Lake Como for a living already knew: this is the most photogenic villa on the lake.

We walked through Balbiano on a quiet Friday in April, before the season opened. Here is what it looks like when there are no production trucks parked outside, and why it is one of a very small number of villas on Como you can rent for a week.

Villa Balbiano is real, bookable, and also tourable.

The villa Hathaway and Streep filmed in

The Devil Wears Prada 2, in production through 2025 and set for a 2026 release, shot lake scenes at Villa Balbiano in spring 2025. The property had been used for House of Gucci (2021) as Patrizia Reggiani’s lakefront refuge, and for Bond 25 / No Time to Die pickups before that. Producers come back to Balbiano because it photographs in every direction: lake-facing, garden-facing, terraced staircase to the water, frescoed interiors that read as period to anyone holding a camera.

What is unusual about Balbiano is that almost nothing on screen is a set. The Cardinal’s throne in the green salon? Still there. The frescoed indoor pool with the painted Lake Como landscape? Still functional. The baroque gilded mirrors? Original. When production wraps, the villa goes back on the rental calendar.

Where you’ll see it in the film

Balbiano shows up across three distinct sets of scenes. The first — and the one most viewers will recognize from the marketing — is the lakefront infinity pool, the long rectangular pool framed by pollarded plane trees with Bellagio on the opposite shore. That is the shot the production team came for; it is also the same view you wake up to if you stay there. It reads as a hotel pool in the cut, but it is the villa’s actual private pool.

The second is in the green salon — Cardinal Gallio’s gilded throne, the verdigris walls, the original chandelier. The salon serves as the backdrop for the more intimate interior dialogue; it is the room with the heaviest concentration of original 16th-century detail in the villa, and the production used it untouched. Look for the gilded eagle and the throne behind the actors.

The third is the frescoed indoor pool — the trompe-l’œil landscapes wrapping a barrel-vaulted ceiling above a small heated lap pool. It is the most visually distinctive single room on the western shore of Lake Como; once you have seen a photo of it you will recognize it on screen instantly. The pool itself is functional, and guests can swim in it.

Outdoor scenes use the terraced Renaissance gardens that step down to the water — the ones Jacques Garcia restored to their original 16th-century plan — and the stone lakefront jetty where the boatman keeps the villa’s classic mahogany Riva. Both photograph as period sets but are not dressed. If you are watching specifically for the villa, the cypress avenue framing the lake view is Balbiano’s signature establishing shot, and the staircase down through the formal garden is the most filmed approach.

Villa Balbiano away from the cameras

Villa Balbiano was built in the late 16th century for Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio — Secretary of State under Pope Gregory XIII, eventual Bishop of Como, and one of the richer men in northern Italy at the time. The villa stayed in religious hands for two centuries, then passed through several families, and was painstakingly restored by interior designer Jacques Garcia in the early 2000s.

Garcia’s restoration is the version most people see in films. He brought back the original frescoes, restored the gardens to their Renaissance plan, and added the things modern guests expect — a heated indoor pool wrapped in painted lake landscapes, climate control in the guest rooms, a kitchen that can feed a film crew. The bones, including the staircase down to the lake and the formal terraced gardens, are 16th-century.

The Cardinal’s throne room

The green salon — the room with the throne, the gilded eagle, and the verdigris walls — is where most of the indoor film scenes happen. It is also where Susan, our owner, sat for a portrait when we walked the villa in 2019. The throne is original. The chandelier is original. Almost everything you see on screen is the thing it was meant to be.

What that means for guests: you are not staying in a film set. You are staying in a 17th-century cardinal’s residence that happens to look photogenic enough that productions keep coming back. The difference matters once you are there with a coffee in the morning.

What it’s like to stay there

Balbiano sleeps fourteen across nine bedrooms, all en-suite. The main villa hosts ten; an annex called the Casa Sul Lago handles the other four. Eight staff live in: a butler, a chef, two housekeepers, a gardener, a boatman, a maintenance lead, a head-of-house. The villa is fully staffed throughout your stay; meals are coordinated with the chef daily, and the boatman takes you across the lake to Bellagio whenever the schedule asks for it.

Rates are seasonal. Prime weeks — June through early September — run €120K–€180K for the week. Shoulder season (mid-September into October, late April through May) is meaningfully lower. Off-season (November through March) the villa is closed for maintenance and is generally not bookable, which is when the production crews tend to film if they need exteriors.

Milan: the rest of where the film was shot

Balbiano is the lake sequence. Most of Devil Wears Prada 2 is Milan. If you are going to Como for the villa, two days in Milan on either end gives you the full filmic loop — and most of the spots are walkable from each other.

The Brera Academy. Where the team arrives at the start of the film, and where the runway scenes were shot. Fifteen minutes on foot from the Duomo. Go for the courtyard; stay for the Mantegna and Caravaggio one floor up.

Palazzo Parigi. The hotel where the characters stay. A working five-star, so the bar is open for a drink even if you are staying at our villa instead.

Villa Arconati in Bollate. The outfit-montage villa with the frescoed staircase and the formal gardens. Only recently opened to the public; worth a half-day trip out of the city if you have the time.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Miranda’s private shopping scene. Always open, obviously touristy, still the right way to start an evening in Milan.

Da Giacomo and Il Salumaio di Montenapoleone. The two restaurants. The first is the nineteenth-century trattoria Nigel name-drops; the second is the Renaissance courtyard where the Donatella scene plays out. Both still open, both still excellent, both still need a reservation a week ahead.

The Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The Last Supper room is recreated for the film — you cannot shoot there. Go anyway. The real da Vinci is fifteen minutes from the Galleria and tickets sell out a month in advance.

Castello Sforzesco and Metropol Piuarch. The two fashion-show venues. Castello is free to wander; Metropol is a former cinema in Lambrate that has become a working production studio, occasionally open during Milan Fashion Week.

We pair Como weeks with Milan stopovers all the time — happy to put the route together if you want all of it.

How you rent it

Villa Balbiano is one of the most-googled, least-available luxury villas in Europe. Prime weeks can book 12–18 months ahead, sometimes longer when a production has the inside track. If you have a specific week in mind, the conversation should start now.

Lead time matters more than budget on Balbiano. For families chasing the July window for kids out of school, expect 18 months of planning. For mid-September honeymoons, often you can land six months out.

Can you tour the villa?

Sometimes — yes. When the calendar allows it, we can arrange a private guided tour of Villa Balbiano with the property’s team: a ninety-minute walk through the gardens, the green salon, the frescoed indoor pool, and the lakefront terrace down to the jetty. Useful if you want to see the villa before committing to a week, or if a full week is more than your trip calls for.

Tours are by appointment only, subject to the rental and production calendar, and typically arranged with at least four weeks of notice. They are not available during prime weeks (June through early September) when the villa is booked solid. A modest fee covers staff time on the day and a donation to the conservation of the frescoes.

To set one up, send us your travel window through our experiences page and tell us whether you want a tour-only visit or whether you’d like us to fold it into a wider Lake Como day. Balbiano is one of several film-set villas in our celebrity hideaways collection — if Balbiano is closed for your dates, several others in the collection can also be visited or booked.

Other Como options if Balbiano is booked

We represent a small number of other lakefront villas on Como that fit the same brief: lake-facing, fully staffed, historically interesting, large enough for an extended family or a milestone trip. They do not have the film−set name recognition of Balbiano, which is usually a feature, not a bug. See the full Lake Como collection or send us your dates and we’ll come back with three options.