An insider's guide to Costa Smeralda, Sardinia
Until the late 1950s, Sardinia’s fabled Costa Smeralda – a rugged stretch of limpid, azure waters and powder-soft white sand between the gulfs of Arzachena and Cugnana on the north-east coast of the island – was known only to locals and a select band of yacht-owners. But in 1958, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV ‘discovered’ the remote coastline and set about developing an eco-sensitive paradise; Princess Margaret and others soon followed.
The result has undertones of a theme-park, but an undeniably tasteful one, and the low-rise pastiche village complexes at least do not mar the beauty of the coastline (the Aga Khan stipulated at the outset that no building should rise above the level of the indigenous vegetation). These days (along with the attendant paparazzi) billionaire jet-setters and Russian oligarchs in mega-yachts, royals and stars such as the Clooneys, the Obamas and Elton John are drawn to the coast by its five-star hotels, its dining scene and, of course, its ravishing natural beauty.
But it’s not all glitz and glam; the beguiling mountainous hinterland is full of archeological sites built by the ancient Nuragic people, and the attractive villages of Arzachena and San Pantaleo provide a more genuinely Sardinian foil to the artifice on the coast.