Villa del Balbianello

Balbianello occupies the tip of a wooded peninsula near Lenno, its terraced gardens stepping down to the water on both sides, plane trees pruned into candelabra shapes, and a two-arched loggia looking straight up the lake. Film scouts keep finding it for a reason — it has appeared in Star Wars and Bond — and no other spot on Como concentrates this much of the lake's romance into one walkable garden.

It is a FAI heritage property with paid, controlled entry, and that cuts both ways: you cannot wander in for a free session, but the grounds are maintained like a set and never mobbed the way the public waterfronts are. Photography sessions on the grounds are a formal affair — professional and wedding shoots need arranging with the property in advance, which is standard practice for the villa weddings held here. For everything else, the water is your friend: a private boat from Lenno or Sala Comacina circles the promontory and gives you the villa, the loggia and the gardens from angles the paying visitors never see.

Light-wise the promontory points south down the lake, taking sun most of the day; late afternoon models the terraces best. The walk in from Lenno takes about twenty minutes on a path over the headland.