CONCORSO D’ELEGANZA VILLA D’ESTE
May · Villa d’Este, Lake Como · Three Days · Since 1929
The Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este is a weekend in May when some fifty cars, built between the 1920s and the 1970s, are judged at the Villa d’Este hotel at Cernobbio, on the western shore of Lake Como.
It is a beauty contest for machines, and it has been one since 1929.
The Cardinal’s Villa
The villa was built in 1568, to designs by Pellegrino Tibaldi, as a summer house for Tolomeo Gallio, cardinal and bishop of Como.
In 1815 Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales, bought it and named it the New Villa d’Este. She could not keep it, and it passed to Prince Torlonia.
In 1873 a group of Milanese businessmen made it a hotel, and it has been one ever since.
The Coppa d’Oro
The first concours was held in September 1929, and its gold cup went to an Isotta Fraschini. It was a showcase for the Italian coachbuilders, who put bodies of their own on other men’s chassis and brought them to the lake to be admired.
It ran fitfully through the war and after. In 1949 the jury chose a sensible saloon by Ghia, and the public voted instead for Touring’s Alfa Romeo 6C 2500. Then it lapsed for decades.
It came back in 1995, and in 1999 BMW took it over.
The public still has its prize. The Coppa d’Oro goes to the car the audience likes best, and the jury gives Best of Show.
What to Know
Saturday belongs to the villa, for entrants and invited guests, and the cars are driven one by one along the terrace above the water. Sunday belongs to the public, at Villa Erba next door, where the cars are shown again.
Tickets for Sunday are sold online. Saturday at the villa is by invitation, or through the packages the organisers sell.
A lounge suit, in a light cloth. It is Lake Como in May.
The hotel fills months ahead. Cernobbio and Como have the rest of the rooms.
Pebble Beach in August and Amelia Island in March are the concours to set beside it.
The mistake is to see the cars only parked. Each is driven past the terrace in the parade, and that is when they are worth watching.
The Court
The Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este is not the Court’s own. Places at the villa on the Saturday, and at the dinners of the weekend, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay on the lake, and the table afterward.
How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.
Set down September MMXXVI