€200.00 for 1 Night
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Looking for help choosing or for a property we don't list? Message our Private Rates Concierge on WhatsApp for member rates and insider knowledge on the right stay
€200.00/ Night
24/7 Support
Looking for help choosing or for a property we don't list? Message our Private Rates Concierge on WhatsApp for member rates and insider knowledge on the right stay
Three restored stone houses in a fishing hamlet on Como's quiet shore — five rooms, two suites and two apartments, breakfast on your balcony, and Abbate boats at the pier.
Award Winner 2022
Europe’s Best Lake Views
Need To Know
- Three restored stone houses holding five lake-front rooms, two suites with water on two aspects, and two apartments, one with a garden
- Open year-round except January
- Pets welcome
- Our Favourite Rooms: the double-aspect suites, with the lake on both sides; an apartment for self-catering stays
- Breakfast served to your room or balcony; picnic baskets prepared by the restaurant kitchen
- Outdoor jacuzzi, solarium, gym and sauna, free by reservation; kayaks, paddleboards and e-bikes to rent
- Reserved covered parking by reservation, for a fee — a rarity on the lake; boat hire and captained tours from the hotel pier
Check in - Check out
Check in from 15:00; check out before 10:00.
We Love
- Breakfast on your own balcony — the house signature: a personalised tray of sweet and savoury, hot coffee, and the lake doing the entertaining a few metres below.
- The boats — Boat2go runs from the pier outside, with Tullio Abbate-built fast boats to rent (no licence needed) or a captained Venetian taxi for the slow, elegant version.
- Illago 5 — the waterside restaurant outsiders book two weeks ahead, with handmade pasta and bread, lake fish and meat done traditionally, and priority tables held for hotel guests.
- Vassena itself — an olive-growers' and fishermen's hamlet of narrow lanes and a little harbour, with Bellagio a short run north and the Grigne lighting up across the water at dusk.
- The aperitif hour — the terrace sits on the water, the sun drops behind the mountains, and the bar pours local wines and proper cocktails as the waves keep time.
Key Features
Book Your Stay at Al Molo 5
€200.00 for 1 Night
Location
Address
Piazza Conciliazione Vassena, 23865 Oliveto Lario, Italy
Travel Info
Milan is a little over an hour's drive; Linate and Bergamo airports about an hour, Malpensa 1h30. The lakefront road is spectacular and tight, so keep the car small. Covered parking can be reserved at the hotel; Bellagio is fifteen minutes north.
Last Updated: 2026-06-04
Expert Review
Origins
Al Molo 5 means At Pier 5, and the pier came first. The owner's history is in boats: a lifetime on the lake, a friendship with Tullio Abbate — the Como powerboat racer and builder whose name still carries weight on this water — and a fleet of Abbate-built craft that today runs as Boat2go from the dock outside the front door. The hotel grew around that life, its interiors threaded with nautical detail, its best ideas all involving the water.
Vassena supplied the setting. One of the three hamlets of Oliveto Lario on the lake's quiet Lecco branch, it remains what it has long been: an olive-growers' and fishermen's village of narrow lanes and a small harbour, on the road between Bellagio and Lecco, with the Grigne massif rising straight across the water. Tradition says the olives go back to Greek settlers planted here under Rome; the silence, mercifully, has survived everything since.
The hotel itself takes the village's own shape: three separate stone houses, recently restored, holding five lake-front rooms, two suites with water on both aspects and two apartments. Newly built within old walls, pitched roofs intact, it is less a hotel inserted into a borgo than a borgo quietly converted to hospitality — with breakfast on the balcony as its founding ritual.
Top Secret
Take the boat day: Bellagio first, then the ferry to Varenna — the prettiest crossing on the lake. Climb to the Castello di Vezio for the view down both branches, then finish in Varenna's lakeside botanical gardens. And before dinner at Illago 5, ask for the same-day list: reservations hold until six in the evening, and guests get first claim.
The Review
The drive in makes the argument before the hotel can. The lakefront road from Bellagio runs tight against the water, the Grigne stacked on the far shore, and Vassena arrives as a handful of stone houses around a miniature harbour — one of which has your name on it. Check in, open the balcony doors, and the lake takes over the schedule.
Mornings begin where the hotel intends: breakfast on the balcony, assembled to order and carried up, the water a few metres below. Days divide between the dock and the shore. Rent one of the Abbate boats — no licence required — and the lake's villas and villages unspool at speed; or take the captained launch and let someone else read the water. Kayaks, paddleboards and e-bikes cover the quieter ambitions, and the little spa terrace — jacuzzi, solarium, sauna by reservation — covers the laziest.
Evenings belong to the waterside. The terrace pours its aperitif as the sun drops behind the western shore, and Illago 5 follows: handmade pasta and bread, lake fish and the classics done properly, at tables the rest of the lake books two weeks out while the house holds yours. It is a small operation in a small village, and that is the whole point — Como with the volume turned down, the boats fuelled, and Bellagio close enough to visit and far enough to leave.
