Eugi Gufo's siteEugi Gufo

Tremezzo is a small municipality in the province of Como, located on the western shore of Lake Como. I visited it almost by chance on 9 April 2012.

Tremezzo is a typical spotless tourist resort, almost devoid of soul. However, some of its details are genuinely interesting. Old boats, for example, are turned into flower beds.

The most common litter bins are not original (you can find them in many other Italian towns), but they clearly show that some designers are not particularly concerned with the practical use of their creations. Real life, in fact, has imposed the addition of an ashtray: stylistically inappropriate, but useful.

The recycling bins, on the other hand, are interesting: original, functional (note the large pedal) and ecological (being almost completely underground, they do not smell).

The «Greenway of Lake Como» is not a wastewater filtration system. It is simply the name of a lakeside route connecting several towns.

In the public garden there are some beautiful antique-modern street lamps: I have never seen objects like these before.

The public garden is maintained as if it belonged to a private owner. It is small, but full of plants and attractive structures.

For the first time in my life I saw a newborn palm tree.

The garden is rather narrow, but its ground is used down to the very last square centimetre.

I insist so much on the local flora also because there are no monuments that stand out for their originality: they are pleasant when seen as a whole. Therefore, the main attraction of Tremezzo is Villa Carlotta, dating back to the 18th century. It is easy to find thanks to the many signs like this one:

Inside the villa there is a beautiful museum, but one that is difficult to photograph. In the huge botanical garden, however, there are several unusual things. For instance, gigantic cedars grow there (they look like brains).

The tulips I had read about in books on the Netherlands.

Obscene trees:

And then the 18th-century garden gnomes: grey and about one metre tall. Apart from the colour, this is exactly how, as a child, I imagined the characters from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Perhaps because they resemble the illustrations of the Russian edition I had read…

Well, now we can say that we have seen all the most interesting things in Tremezzo. So it is time to go back to Milan.