THE FANTINI EXPERIENCE
An avant-garde tap company in Northern Italy is also the home to Casa Fantini Lake Time, an intimate luxury boutique hotel overlooking Lake Orta, one of Italy’s unsung jewels. Welcome to paradise.
Italy’s Lake District is always flooded with tourists, including buses crammed full of retirees ticking off their travel bucket list, flocking to one of the popular flashier lakes.
Lago di Como and Lago di Maggiore draw the biggest crowds, thanks to Hollywood celebrities such as George Clooney, who bought the historic 18th Century Villa Oleandra as a summer residence on Como in 2002, as well as Bruce Springsteen, Robert DeNiro, Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, all regular summer guests at Villa d’Este, the undisputed grand dame of Lake Como.
Lake Maggiore enjoys a different kind of fame, one more literary and so worth the visit for this if not its sheer natural beauty. In September 1918, just two months after a serious shrapnel injury sustained when an Austrian trench mortar landed in a dug- out he was sharing with Italian soldiers near Treviso during World War II, a 19-year- old Ernest Hemingway checked into room 106 (now the Hemingway Suite) at the Grand Hotel Des Iles Borromees during his convalescence leave.
His experiences there were fictionalised in A Farewell to Arms.
All this, of course, has made the region very touristico, as the Italians would affectionately say. Yet, the great lakes of Italy are more than just places to spot a celebrity. A visit to the seaside is the ultimate weekend escape, if not a necessity for Italians anxious to escape fast-paced cities, like Milan and Turin, where life moves at the pace of zooming, tiny red Fiats and makes as much noise as a bustling trattoria during lunch.
But for just over 1,000
inhabitants, who call Orta San Giulio home, their typical Italian life is calm and takes inspiration from the waters of Lake Orta, also known as Lake Time.
Further afield, at 20km west, is Sacro Monte di Orta, one of nine sacred mountains on the Unesco World Heritage list in Northern Italy, which sits almost 400m above sea level with its 20 complex chapels showing Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical designs from artists such as Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli (also known as il Morazzone; 1573–1626).
The vanguard designs complement and add to the romanticism of Orta. Italian companies Alessi and Bialetti, synonymous for their highdesign kitchen gadgets, have been manufacturing in the area since the early 1900s. Avant-garde designs also come in the form of aristocratic villas dating back to the 13th century with the Turkish-inspired, five-star Villa Crespi the most indulgent with its two-Michelin star celebrity chef Antonino Cannavacciuolo beckoning selfprofessed gourmets to indulge in his lavish degustation menu.
OF LUXURY TAPS AND RESORTS
Another unlikely idiosyncratic hotel is Casa Fantini Lake Time. Sitting by her window overlooking the island of San Giulio is Daniela
Fantini, owner of luxury tap brand Fantini Rubinetti and Casa Fantini Lake Time. The soft-spoken CEO was born and raised on the lake yet remains captivated by what she sees from her lakeside office and place of business where her 100plus employees create some of the world’s most decorated luxury taps.
Fantini is just one of the dozen or so tap manufacturers in the region. Locals are not sure how the region came to be known for taps. Some say it dates back to the post-World War II era during the commercial and economic boom which resulted in families tapping into the tap industry, while others hail the manufacture of church bells to be the reason for their unique association.
For Fantini, it started with her father and his love for motorbikes. “My father wanted to be a racing car driver. On his return from the war, everything changed and the ambition was abandoned, although his passion for mechanics would never leave him. He bought a motorbike, fitted his cellar with a lathe on which he would work, threading the floats during the day. In the evening, he would take them to the leading tap companies in the area and, together with his brother Ersilio, began to develop and produce small mechanical products. With this, the foundations were laid for our family business.”
She continued to work with her father, building a formidable reputation among international designers in a highly competitive industry where shortcuts came in the form of outsourcing beyond
Italy for parts and assembly. Following her father’s unexpected death in 1990, she took over the company at 28 and has been creating milestones of her own as leader of the Fantini brand.
Now 57, she has continued to grow her father’s legacy into something more than just a tap factory with exports to every corner of the world, including upmarket hotels in Taiwan, high- end residential suites in the US and luxury malls in Dubai.
Under her leadership, Fantini
“we wanted to express [the beauty] in our hotel as well.” DANIELA FANTINI