Sala Vele

The Great Sailing Tradition of Lake Como

The oldest recorded regatta took place on Lake Como in 1851. It was won by Marquis Trotti, a Milanese who owned a villa in Bellagio.

On Lake Como, on August 2, 1850, the first recorded sailing competition in Italy took place, and in 1872, the Società Regate Club—the oldest of Italy’s sailing clubs—was founded. In this room, we display the boats that played a leading role in the regattas on Lake Como: the majestic English racers from the late 19th century, the Monotypes, the Stars, the Snipes, and the Dinghies.

Among them, the majestic Cisko-Yu—an English racer from 1896 that belonged to Engineer Carcano, the designer of Moto Guzzi—and the Star Merope, the Olympic gold medal-winning boat helmed by Agostino Straulino, the greatest Italian sailor of all time, stand out.

Agostino Straulino

Agostino Straulino, perhaps the greatest Italian sailor of all time, seemed to have made a pact with Aeolus, capable as he was of sensing, before anyone else, the onset and direction of a wind—even from the faintest of its whispers. Straulino used to say that there is no such thing as a dead calm at sea; that you can catch the wind even when it seems not to be there.

The Priest Who Won Regattas

Clearly unconcerned by the murmurs raised by the local bigots—due to his returns to the rectory with his cassock soaked through and the resulting bewilderment expressed by his ecclesiastical superiors— Father Luigi never gave up sailing his Primola, whether on fine days during the Breva season or when the evening thermal wind swept down onto the lake from Valsassina…