Maldives

28 records, more than any other country in the register, and almost all of them about one decision taken differently: what to do with an island once you hold the whole of it.

It can be kept as forest with the houses hidden inside — Soneva Fushi did that on Kunfunadhoo, one of the largest islands in the country, which is why it has the rarest thing in the archipelago, an interior to walk into. It can be owned and not slept on: Gili Lankanfushi holds its island for kitchens and garden while all forty-five villas stand over the lagoon. It can be rationed by pool — at Huvafen Fushi every villa has one, which is a rule of subdivision rather than an amenity, and caps the count in the mid-forties. Or it can be extended: more than sixty per cent of Reethi Rah is reclaimed, dredged out of the shallows to manufacture twelve beaches where nature would have given one long strand.

Ownership is less uniform than the geography suggests. Baros has belonged to the same wholly Maldivian company since 1973 and publishes its own decade-by-decade record of what was added when. Soneva Jani holds five islands and leaves four empty. Naladhu holds one small island and leans on two sister resorts across the lagoon for everything it chose not to build.

Not one Maldivian house in this register publishes its area. The dimensions that exist here came from reviewers pacing islands — Cocoa Island at about 350 metres by 170 — not from the companies that own them.