Porto Cervo

Karim Aga Khan first came into this inlet with four or five friends on a twelve-metre boat, and by his own account there was nothing there. On 14 March 1962 he and five partners formed the Costa Smeralda Consortium, bought 1,800 hectares of granite and juniper, and put a committee of architects in charge of what would be built on it. Almost everything worth knowing here came out of that committee's first decade.

Stay

Institutions

Hotel Cala di Volpe (Cala di Volpe) — Jacques Couëlle's hotel on the bay of the same name, among the consortium's first buildings. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond and the Soviet agent Anya check in here.

Hotel Pitrizza (Liscia di Vacca) — Luigi Vietti's hotel of 1963: 49 rooms and 16 villas kept low on the hillside, with gardens planted on the roofs and a saltwater pool cut out of the granite. LVMH's Cheval Blanc is due to take it over in 2027.

Newer Arrivals

Romazzino (Romazzino) — Michele Busiri Vici and his son Giancarlo built it in white, following the rocks down to the sea; Belmond reopened it in 2025. The beach below, Spiaggia del Principe, is said to have been the Aga Khan's favourite.