When choosing a hotel, you usually consider things like the view, or the location, or if there’s an in-house Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant overlooking the river (just me?). But at Il Sereno, you also consider the sound. In 2025, the luxury Lake Como hotel unveiled the world’s first listening suite, Darsena, which is designed for kicking back, clicking on your vinyl of choice, and letting the music take over. All with a side of Lake Como views, of course.
The idea for such a suite was born when Il Sereno’s co-founder, Luis Contreras, was travelling in Japan and came across listening bars – dedicated spaces for enjoying vinyl over a drink or two. He then wondered what would happen if you made, not a bar, but a suite dedicated to listening, and voila, Darsena was born.
Brace yourselves: there’s some technical terms coming. The suite is fitted with a McIntosh vacuum tube amplifier and refurbished Revox B77 reel-to-reel player, plus a set of swish speakers made from the same noce canaletto wood used throughout the rest of the hotel. For any non-audiophiles among us: that basically means the sound is exceptional.
Record-wise, it’s stocked with over 500 LPs from Contreras’s personal collection (he seems to have a thing for Genesis), but you can also ask for your favourites to be added to the stash in advance. So yes, it is possible to lie back and listen to Folklore by Taylor Swift while overlooking the lake (again, just me?).
The walls are properly soundproofed to ensure nothing gets in the way of you and your tunes (or the other way around), and the suite itself has sliding doors that you can move around to create your ideally sized sound sanctuary. It’s also worth mentioning that the suite was designed in collaboration with Spanish architect and designer Patricia Urquiola – one of the world’s best living architects (see The Emory’s third and fourth floors and Six Senses Rome as evidence). As you’d expect, her design is beautifully done.
There’s more. The suite also has a swish dining area, from which you can order a menu devised for the room by Michelin-starred chef Raffaele Lenzi – and it comes with suggested musical pairings. This does two things. First, it expands having dinner into a multi-sensory, immersive event that can, as some researchers believe, make the dishes taste better (look up Professor Charles Spense’s work, if you’re interested). And second, it ensures you’re transported back to Lake Como and Il Sereno when you hear that track again. Talk about ending things on a good note.
Georgie Young is digital editor of Secret Trips
