The Grand Hotel Villa d’Este hosted what was arguably the world’s most elegant gathering of classic wooden boats and yachts. And what could say ‘La Dolce Vita’ better than an armada of Rivas dancing on the waves of Lake Como?
Members of the rather secretive Associazione Scafi Epoca – an association and historical register of vintage and classic hulls – watered their classic wooden boats on Lake Como for the Villa d’Este Vintage Yachting.
Sipping on an Aperol on the Grand Hotel’s waterfront terrasse buzzing with waiters in splendid white uniforms, the sonorous chugging of the wooden boats filling the air, one immediately felt thrown back to the 1950s and 1960s, when the international hautevolee spent their summers yachting and water-skiing on the lakes of Northern Italy. Had H.S.H. Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace of Monaco or Count Giovanni Agusta moored their Aquarama on the Villa’s floating pool on the lake, it wouldn’t have come as a surprise.
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