Mediterranean Private

46 records around one sea, and the shelf where this collection learned to distrust the word private. Corsica, Sardinia, the Amalfi coast, the Côte d'Azur, the Balearics, Greece, Montenegro: small holdings by the standards of the register, tightly bounded, and old.

Two hectares can be a territory here and twenty can fail to be one. Villa TreVille holds about two hectares of Positano cliff with a dock at the bottom, and it is an estate. La Réserve de Beaulieu held a building on a boulevard with a seawater pool at the sea wall, and the House removed it from the collection. The difference is not size but whether there is ground between the house and the street.

The three houses of the Costa Smeralda are the clearest lesson on the shelf, because one client, one architectural committee and three years produced three different answers. Pitrizza's sand is a walk from the rooms. Romazzino presides over a beach it only partly holds. Cala di Volpe's is public with a club on it. No published source distinguishes them; this register does.

Wrong for travellers who equate Mediterranean with beach. Several of the strongest entries here reach the water by shuttle, by launch or not at all — Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc has no sand in any sense, and does not miss it.