THE ORIGINS

It all began at the dawn of the 1800, when Giuseppe Gianella had the fantastic idea to turn the old Inn at the port of Cadenabbia (the House of Boatmen) into a de lux hotel for tourists and travellers.

In no time Cadenabbia became one of the most favoured places for tourists travellers from all over the world. The increasing number of people who wished to sped their Summer holidays at Cadenabbia, because of the beauty and the mildness of its climate, caused the necessity to build new hotels to house different categories of guests.

At that time, the hamlet of Cadenabbia ended with a group of houses set in a place along the lake called Maiolica because of a firm of ceramics. Also nowadays that place is known as Maiolica and it is one of the hamlets of Griante.

It is possible to believe that this local handicraft production was due to the presence of a very good quality kaolin, the row material for this kind of works, and it seems that the outcome was so valuable to be exported beyond the Alps, too.

People and goods were transported by lake and only a path joined Cadenabbia to Maiolica. It was only during the second half of the 19th. century that G. Gianella had a road built along the lake to join Menaggio. For that reason, each and every settlement had a small port or a landing place, and also at Maiolica there was a very small port to make trade easy. But the flourishing of tourism determined the end of the ceramic production. The building was turned into a hotel which for a long time was known with the name of Albergo della Maiolica, second in size and de-lux only to the one at Cadenabbia.