How Italy’s most famous coastline stays crowd-free

A five-minute taxi journey costs €50, a single drink can set you back more than €20 – and if you want to avoid shelling out €60 for a plate of pasta, you might struggle to find a supermarket. But the Costa Smeralda offers one luxury that’s hard to put a price on at the peak of the summer holiday season – a surprising lack of crowds.

Back in the 1960s, this 20km stretch of beaches and pine forest on Sardinia’s northern coastline was uninhabited and deemed of little value to the country’s farmers. But the Aga Khan spotted a business opportunity. He purchased the land and began the process of turning it into a tourist destination for the upper classes, establishing a consortium to ensure all future development remained tightly controlled.

It soon started to attract a celebrity crowd, with Greta Garbo, Rita Hayworth, Grace Kelly, Kirk Douglas and Princess Margaret all visiting in its 1960s and 1970s heyday. But