A Journey to Bellagio: 100 years ago, Marinetti wrote the Futurist Manifesto and died here.

The inhabitants of this area drive as if to pay homage to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti — the man who published his famous "Futurist Manifesto" exactly one hundred years ago, on February 20, 1909, in which he celebrated the beauty of sports cars and frenzy in general, and who died here in Bellagio in 1944.

But this winter evening there were no more grinding tires; instead, there was snow on the road and on the palm trees, the lake seemed to shake in the cold and threw small waves, and the local cypresses stood like inverted icicles. A few hours later the road was closed, and Bellagio lay cut off from the world, positioned at the end of the great rocky outcrop that rises into the lake between Como and Lecco.

The water slides of the lido sit empty in the lead grey water, and the hotels where Marinetti lived until his death are closed. The "Hotel du Lac", the "Metropole", the "Suisse", and the "Splendide", are behind padlocks and boards, with half-open blinds behind which it sometimes hammers. The place has a hangover. After New Year's Eve, the last restaurants and hotels had closed down.

I parked in the Piazza della Chiesa and brought my suitcase to the hotel. A little later a light emerged from the snow drifting over the lake; the car ferry from Cadenabbia arrived, a festive, illuminated thing that, like a hungry animal, rammed its tin mouth against the pier and, after a short break, drove away just as empty as it had come.

Only the "Bar dello Sport" was still open, where could be seen Augusto Bifolco's friendly head behind the cash register. The soul of the place, Bifolco is always open until midnight, so that if there is nowhere else, you can still get one of the great ham croissants that his family bakery produces. Perhaps Bifolco, too, was a kind of futurist, since they keep old postcards here showing the bar in the twenties, where a racing car stands in front.

Bifolco came and said that German writers sometimes appeared here. “Günter Grass has already sat here, he drank red wine and brandy”. After the bar closed, I went to the pier at the northernmost point of the peninsula. That's where the Dutchman was drifting around. He stared into the water where lay a sunken motorboat; in the clear, green water you could even see the driver's platform at night. What was the story of this boat? He and I were probably the only people left on the empty streets of Bellagio. Or perhaps not? Further up, footsteps reverberated, while from the direction of the snow-covered peaks, an animal howled.

A few days later the snow was gone, the sun was shining, and the mountain above Tremezzo — with its elegant snowtop — looked like Fujiyama. But the sun stayed for only a few hours, when heavy black clouds rammed the mountain tops in the west and covered the lake with à film of icy mist.

Text: Niklas Maak