Imagine a boat moored in one of the most beautiful bends of Lake Como, between Tremezzina and Como, designed as a private residence by the most important creatives of the golden age of design, the 60s, and being able to climb aboard. A dream made possible thanks to the restoration of FAI that reopened this little gem to the public.
The Velarca was designed and built between 1959 and 1961 at the best of Emilio and Fiammetta Norsa, cultured Milanese entrepreneurs who wanted a floating home to host friends and relatives on Lake Como.
To do so, they turned to an architect friend, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, one of the founders of the famous BBPR studio in Milan. At the time, with his partners, Gian Luigi Banfi, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, and Enrico Peressutti, he was working on the Torre Velasca, inaugurated in 1957, which thus became, together with Noah’s Ark, the inspiration for the name of the boat.
The Velarca is a sublime “caprice”, a small masterpiece of the 20th century, whimsical, bizarre, unrepeatable as are the results produced by the meeting between a cultured, intelligent and smart client like the Norsa couple and professionals of the calibre of BBPR.
(Marco Magnifico President FAI- Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano)
Another source of contamination for the architects were the Milanese trams, for the wooden beading and the shape of the windows, as well as the creations of the best designers of the time with whom they used to collaborate, such as Gio Ponti for the Ninfea seats that we still see today lying on the pier in all their elegance.
The hull used, however, is that of an old 19-meter Larian gondola, the Corriera Tremezzina, which at the beginning of the century sailed across Lake Como carrying goods and people.
Donated to FAI by the heirs Aldo and Maria Luisa Norsa in 2011, after a long conservative restoration, the Velarca was opened to the public in 2024, returning to its original mooring, in Ossuccio, right in front of Isola Comacina. An area that the Norsa couple had fallen in love with to the point of wanting to buy a plot of land in that area, which then served as a “port” for their houseboat.
Curiously, it was precisely the small size of the land, unsuitable for building a house, that suggested the couple to design a floating house, rather than a villa as initially hypothesized.
A visit to the Velarca is truly something magical, especially because every object and detail has remained the original one of the time: from the sheets with the logo of the boat, to the tea service, up to the Brionvega monitor that shows a video on the history of the project in loop.
And for a day dedicated to true beauty, you cannot miss the other jewel of the FAI, Villa del Balbianello, which is only a few minutes by car from the boat and for which in the summer special tickets with transfer by motorboat are also available.
The Secret
Among the original objects left in the boat, very cutting-edge for the time, we also find the telephone on which the real telephone directory of Fiammetta Jabes Norsa was hung.
Useful Info
La Velarca
Via Iseo Antonio Vaccani 4
22010 Ossuccio, Tremezzina, Como
Tel. +39 02 4676151
FAI members: free admission
Full price: 8 euro
Consult the FAI website for more information and special tickets combined with Villa del Balbianello.
