It is a 15-20 min walk uphill from the center of town

Negative: breakfast very poor, rooms spacious but basic furniture and inadequate heating, unfriendly owner


Positive: amazing views from the rooms with balcony ( superior rooms ) private funicular to get to your room !

This hotel is located just outside Varenna. It sits on a steep hill above Lake Como and above the magnificent Villa Monastero, which lies along the shoreline. We arrived by train and walked to the hotel. It took less than a half hour, and we stopped for brief rests along the way. There is a taxi service available for those who do not wish to walk. We took the taxi back to the train station at the end of our stay. The Hotel was originally a home for the Vocationist Fathers, a priestly order founded in Naples. Today it bears many of the charming remnants of its history, including attractive marbles and stonework, along with a small chapel. There are lovely pathways and gardens on the hillside surrounding the hotel, as well as little devotional grottoes. To reach the upper part of the hotel where we stayed, there are two small funiculars. We found this quite unique. There were two staff members we encountered regularly during our stay, a young woman and an elder gentleman. The young woman spoke fluent English. She was very helpful. The elder gentleman was generally quiet, but helpful whenever we asked for assistance. We stayed for five days. For us, the place was serene, and the view of the lake and the mountains from the several terraces and from our room was astoundingly beautiful.

my wife and i spent three nights here in early october 2012. this hotel is clean and well run with amazing views of lake como. the rooms are modern with well-equipped ensuites including showers. the property is interesting as it was an orphanage, including the original chapel. how many hotels have you stayed in where you had a funicular to yourself just to get to your room ? the staff speak very little english and, although helpful, tend to be reserved. the downsides are basically two...first, the breakfast was fair, at best. the coffee machine produced only adequate products and the juice machine on all three mornings produced an undrinkable watery ade..virtually everything on the buffet came out of boxes from the closet or refrigerator. second, the location is as far as one can get from the train station and town center and still be considered varenna. unless you are able to walk considerable distances (minimum 1/2 mile) in whatever weather it is at the moment, you will have to take a taxi (at 12 euros) every time you go to the ferry, train, or town. it is no doubt a "romantic" and unusual place, but there are real tradeoffs. for us, returning would be a matter of the offered price and what else was available.

Understand, we cannot comment on the hotel or its view of Lake Como because we literally could not reach the hotel in our rental car. Other reviewers commented about the hotel's distance from the train station and having to climb up a "hill" for 15 or 20 minutes to reach it. They weren't kidding. First, the hotel is on the other side of Varenna from the boat docks, shops and lakeside restaurants. Then there's the "hill" which turned out to be a one lane road with a 10 degree slope with two very tight hairpin turns in it. My husband has been driving in Europe for years so we started up in our European-sized cross-over. Unfortunately, when we reached the first hairpin turn, there were three cars parked there in the landing which gave us no maneuvering room. Because the rental car did not have hand-operated parking brake, my husband could not get traction on the gravel road without either spinning the tires or stalling. We must have struggled to make that turn for almost 10 minutes. Fearing that we would damage the car's transmission if we continued, we finally turned around and headed back down "the hill." We parked and called the hotel to explain our situation and ask if there was an alternate way to reach them. My husband speaks some Italian and the desk clerk spoke some English, but after talking for about five minutes, the desk clerk's solution was to declare "Can't help you" and hang up. We had no choice but to find another hotel in Varenna. Thank goodness, it wasn't high season. We asked to new hotel clerk to call the Eremo and tell them in Italian why we were cancelling so we wouldn't be charged as a "no show." When he did, he said that the manager he spoke to became "hot" (which we assume means abusive) and threatened to charge us for the entire stay, which was against their cancellation policy (they didn't after all).

We were much happier staying closer in Varenna where it was a 10 minute stroll to the boats, restaurants, etc. The view may be spectacular from the Eremo but there are lots of beautiful views of Como from Varenna. And it is really very limiting to a vacation if every time you want to do something, you have to ask yourself if it is worth a 30 minute walk there and back.