Made In Italy

How an unassuming seaside town in Tuscany became the centre of the superyacht phenomenon.

- Mark Ellwood

“MAKE ME THE biggest yacht in the world – bigger than anyone has ever seen,” he commanded. It was a mold-breaking commission for the Benetti shipyard more than 40 years ago, from a client keen to tout his wealth. The Italian firm had already earned accolades for making fine yachts, but this was to be a new kind of vessel, a ‘superyacht’, if you will. Be netti’s designers embraced the brief with gusto and the resulting craft was the epitome of oceangoing glamour. At 86m, it had five decks equipped with 11 cabins, a cinema, and exhaust funnels sloped outward to allow helicopters to land on the helipad more easily. There was even a disco – it was 1979, after all.

The estimates for the cost went as high as US$100 million, a vast sum for the shipyard. More importantly, as the 1980s dawned, it launched a new category of aspirational goods. A simple yacht no longer sated the yen for cruising – only a superyacht would do. And the leading place to commission one was the home base of Benetti and its fellow generations-old Tuscan boatbuilders, a small seaside town called Viareggio.