Welcome to the special “20th Anniversary” section of Top Yacht Design. Here we present to you, day by day, the best stories, yachts, characters we have covered in these 20 years of Top Yacht Design, from 2006 to the present day.
Taken from Top Yacht Design no. 2/2015 pp. 144-149.
Portopiccolo is growing
The new marina and village at Sistiana enters its first full season.
Just seven years ago, this section of the Baia di Sistiana coastline, a stone’s throw from Trieste, was scarred by an abandoned quarry. Over four decades, many different rejuvenation projects were proposed for it, including one by Renzo Piano. All withered on the vine. It eventually took 14 long years of intense bureaucratic wrangling from the initial purchase of the area to even begin work in 2008. Today, however, Portopiccolo is a small anc very lovely village with some fantastic design flourishes and a marina for Is yachts of up to 24 metres. There are also 465 luxury residential units of between 50 and 400 square metres, a beach club with spa and conference facilities, and a host of stores open a year round.
A system of undergroun car parks and lifts that go all the war into the mountain mean the village ; completely car-free too. Portopiccolo is very far from being just another luxury marina with a village tacked on. It really does have something extra to offer. For a start, it has a soul. Something you realise as you wander through around doing your shopping or when you walk into its gorgeous beach club or settle down on its beach. Like a very real town, Portopiccolo is open to non-residents (who have, amongst other amenities, a stunning pool with views over much of the coast). There is also the five-star Falisia Resort Hotel & SPA and two restaurants, one adjacent to the beach club and the other, Bris, overlooking the port and in the care of chef Leonardo Marongiu, who was trained by the great Gualtiero Marchesi.
Currently, Portopiccolo is being operated by Rilke srl, a subsidiary of Serenissima SGR and the Eccher Group. The principal of the latter, Claudio de Eccher, told us what the project means to him: “Portopiccolo and the Baia di Sistiana are the loveliest part of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where I grew up. To me they are a dream come true after many years of waiting,” he explains. “I started working on the project in the late 1970s and it took decades to get it completed, but today it’s a place where you can live a sustainable, car-free lifestyle with boats just outside your front door.”
De Eccher is a man of his word as well as a connoisseur of good design. His own yacht, a Southern Wind So Flush Deck, is tied up in the marina even though his favourite is Woodwinds, an 8-metre Nathanael Herreshoff design built in New England. “Design is an expression of the taste of the moment. I adore extreme design but I appreciate things that are beautiful but not extreme even more. Things that stand the test of time because of their quality. Portopiccolo will do that,” he concludes.
by Giuliana Fratnik
