(30 minutes by car from Porto San Paolo)
Over the years the Costa Smeralda has acquired an exclusive place in the international imagination. Its extraordinary natural beauty, its sea and its beaches are the marvellous setting for the jet set that since its creation has chosen it for its holiday destination.
Its name comes from the colour of its sea and the fame that is tied to its designer and creator, Prince Karim Aga Khan, who in the early years of the 1950s decided to buy these territories to establish the Costa Smeralda Consortium.
Its towns, true paradises of luxury, were designed by great architects and constructed with architecture that appeared in those years and was foreign to Sardinia but which over time became the model and reference for all the tourist development of Gallura. Over time the Costa Smeralda had been frequented by movie stars, entrepreneurs, sovereigns and by anybody who has been famous and rich. Some of these are Greta Garbo, Princess Margaret of England, Gianni Agnelli, Jacqueline Kennedy, Juan Carlos, Harrison Ford, Sting, rich Arab Emirs and more recently by Russian magnates and oligarchs.
A trip to the Costa Smeralda is the chance to see an international Sardinia, certainly less identifiable and for some even “foreign” compared to the culture of the land that hosts it, but also because of those very qualities it is a destination to visit during a stay, considering the closeness to Porto San Paolo.