Lido di Bellagio

This guide to Lido di Bellagio on Lake Como starts with the diving board that still stands over the water and the far grander beach club that was never finished around it. In 1932 the architect Pietro Lingeri drew up a strikingly modern lakeside complex here, praised by Domus magazine and the designer Giò Ponti, and built with engineer Augusto Pini. You'll hear how construction stalled, restarted years later under a different engineer, and left only fragments of that original vision behind. Look for the diving board cleared in September 1932, one of the few pieces that made it off the drawing board.