V.A. Riviera Belmare - Summer in Versilia, Italy 1960s

When the Fiat heir Edoardo Agnelli putt-putted in his Savoia-Marchetti seaplane a few hours south of Turin to Versilia in the early 1920s, it must have seemed like he’d reached the tropics of South America rather than the stretch of coastal Tuscany north of Lucca. Before him were the marble peaks of the Apuan Alps, serrated and chipped as primitive flints; the sea humidity settled on umbrella pines beneath them like a cloud forest of monkey puzzle trees; and at their feet, 14 miles of wild sand dunes – a long, sun-gold sprint of freedom near the cramped pebble coves of Portofino on the edge of the Ligurian sea. Versilia was a law unto itself, a topographical greenhouse between mountain and water.