Updated Nov. 15, 2024 at 5:15 p.m.*
TORNO — In January, the municipality of Torno, a town of about 1,200 inhabitants on Lake Como, in northern Italy, published on its website a note presenting a plan to build a new tourist complex. The project includes plans to build hotels, restaurants, spas, private docks, parking lots, driveways and roads. It concerns an area of 29,000 m² and sparked panic in the small residential center.
“There is a will to choke the territory, it’s like having a full water bottle and pouring more water in it, even though it doesn’t fit anymore,” said Agop Manoukian, a sociologist who has been living in Torno since the 1990s.
Lake Como, a narrow body of water caught between the Lombardian mountains and surrounded by countless villages, has become a favorite destination for both Italian and international tourists in recent years. Luxury hotels, swimming pools and other infrastructures are reshaping its shores.
All of this is happening in a territory that is very fragile from a hydrogeological standpoint. It can no longer withstand the exorbitant influx of tourists. And locals are suffering the consequences more than anyone else.
Is George Clooney to blame?
People living by the lake say that everything started with George Clooney. The American actor bought a villa in the town of Laglio back in 2002. Since then, more celebrities have come. International productions have chosen the lake for their movies. Travel reports have multiplied. And social media have acted as a megaphone to share postcards of the lake. Meanwhile, Lake Como has become an international brand.
According to the Lombardy region, where the lake is located, 4.8 million people slept by the lake in 2023, and hosting structures were at full capacity. That is 1 million more than in 2019. Between 2016 and 2023 the number of people employed in the tourism sector has increased by 46.6%, and further records are expected to be set this year.
These places have been squeezed enough already. We don’t necessarily have to become a small Dubai.
Lake Como is by now an established luxury destination, a phenomenon that has triggered the restoration of ancient villas and the construction of new ones.
“Last year, Lake Como was the top location for investors,” Giorgio Bianchi, a real estate consultant said in 2023. The real estate agency Knight Frank ranks it first among Italian destinations for real estate prices growth. Moreover, as highlighted by the consulting company Pambianco, hotel multinationals are scouting for new investments by the lake.
Tourism is the future
In addition to concrete, there is also a focus on providing tourists with experiences in the area. New professions, such as sports & adventure manager, have been created. On nearby mountains, snowless due to climate change, ski runs of artificial snow are being planned.
Over the past decade, two five-star hotels were opened in Torno: the Mandarin Oriental (formerly the Casta Diva), and the Sereno Hotel. Similar complexes could soon be built in other villages by the lake, like in Dongo, where a luxury hotel featuring 110 rooms and suites, restaurants, gyms, parking lots and spas is currently being discussed.
“Those who govern the territory think that the future of the village is tourism. We have nothing against tourism, but there’s different ways of doing it,” Manoukian said. “The problem is that these places have been squeezed enough already. We don’t necessarily have to become a small Dubai.”
Before you wouldn’t build in certain places because you were aware of the fragility of the land.
Postcard images and glossy reports conceal many of the problems created by the rampant “touristification.” In summer 2023, accounts of inconveniences multiplied: overcrowded buses that left people stranded; boats that could not get everyone on; traffic jams due to the narrow, winding roads crowded with tour buses and thousands of cars. Chaos that also created a surreal conflict between luxury and mass tourism.
“Considering how much tourists pay to sleep by the lake, we can’t afford for them not to find a private motorboat for a tour of the lake the next day. Otherwise they will go to Monte Carlo next year,” said Luca Leoni, president of the local division of the hotel managers association Federalberghi Como.
Overcrowding has forced the Italian Fund for the Environment (Fai) to limit entrances to Villa del Balbianello, in the town of Tremezzina. In the small village of Corenno Plinio, an entry fee has been introduced — before Venice’s decision. Some are advocating for the same solution to be adopted in the city of Como, after which the lake is named.
Concrete and floods
In Lake Como, overtourism does not just cause overcrowding and a generalized collapse of services. The area is also plagued by floods, due in part to climate change — with increasingly heavy rainfall concentrated over time — but also to land consumption.
“Before you wouldn’t build in certain places because you were aware of the fragility of the land. Today, in turn, you think about the floor plan, the value of the land in speculative terms. And you think okay, that plot of land lends itself well to new investments, and you build wildly,” said Roberto Fumagalli, President of the Ilaria Alpi Environmental Circle. “We are repeating the same mistakes made during the first urbanization of Lake Como in the 1960s. And the effects could be even worse this time.”
Tourism drugged by a mad economy is producing devastating consequences for the territory.
In summer 2021, the town of Blevio was hit by a mudslide. To this day, people are still displaced because of it, reconstruction is at a standstill and other disasters have hit the residential center, earning it the nickname “the village of floods.”
In 2022 it was Laglio’s turn: Villas built near creeks were gutted by mud and debris. The Italian Institute for Environmental Research and Protection (Ispra) has defined the Como area as one of the most exposed in the Lombardy region to hydrogeological risks. Yet construction on the lake continues.
“Where there used to be a forest, today there are villas, boxes and other facilities that shouldn’t be there,” Fumagalli said. “Tourism drugged by a mad economy is producing devastating consequences for the territory.”
For Sale signs
Nesso’s old town is filled with for sale signs. In the winter, the houses are almost all empty, making it feel like a ghost town. In the summer, its narrow streets are filled with thousands of tourists, just like the stone houses that host people from all over the world, and the shores overtaken by water taxis.
In the 1950s, more than 1,700 people lived in Nesso, compared to 1,000 or fewer today. Over the past 20 years, nearby villages like Pognana Lario and Veleso have lost up to 30% of their residents, a trend the local newspaper La Provincia called “la grande fuga dal lago” (the great escape from the lake).
While Italy’s falling birth rates are a factor to take into account, there’s more. On websites such as Airbnb, there are dozens of listings for towns that have only a handful of houses. The tourism boom has exacerbated the business of short-term rentals. Those who own a house by the lake earn more with vacation rentals than with long-term ones. This, combined with overall price hikes, is forcing locals to escape the lake.
Ferragni effect
“My desire was to find a house by the lake. My wife and I have been looking for a while, but then we had to give up and move to the suburbs of Como. The prices are out of control. I know very few people of my generation who managed to stay here,” said Giorgio Bellini, 32, who was raised in Turin. “Until a few years ago, when a house was for sale it would be bought by locals. Now it’s always foreigners who buy it as a second house or to make a profit. There is no sustainable market for those coming from here, and the village is losing its population.”
Our children will never be able to buy an apartment in their hometown.
When in 2022 it was unveiled that the Italian influencer Chiara Ferragni were buying a villa in Pognana Lario, some feared the consequences on housing prices. “Our children will never be able to buy an apartment in their hometown,” a resident told the local newspaper QuiComo.
Lake Como’s population decline is also visible by looking at schools. From the two eighth-grade classes in Torno, 42 students will leave this year, while a first-grade class of 17 will be formed. In Nesso, the superintendent has ordered the closure of the sixth-grade class, because only five students enrolled. Residents mobilized and were able to halt the decision — at least for now. Once again, the declining birthrate is a factor, but the phenomenon is also a result of people leaving these places.
Not even the city of Como is spared by this. Its historic center is emptying due to rising prices and a lack of housing: in 35 years the local population has declined by 25%. A third of vacation houses available in the city were put on the market only last year. The city council’s center-left opposition has called for solutions to the problems of gentrification and unregulated tourism. But Mayor Alessandro Rapinese appears to have different priorities, such as setting up grates against the homeless and turning away unaccompanied foreign minors passing through Como along the migration route to Switzerland.
In the background, Lake Como, reduced to an amusement park, continues to operate at full capacity.
*Originally published July 7, 2024, this article was updated Nov. 15, 2024 with Extra! news of Lake Como Air in a can, as well as enriched media.
