When Prince Karim Aga Khan’s consortium began work on the Costa Smeralda in 1961, the land around the bay of Cala di Volpe was wild and uninhabited. The hotel built on its shore, which dates from 1963, was one of the first of the new coast, and the Aga Khan gave the commission to Jacques Couëlle, a French architect with no formal training who shaped many of its forms with his own hands. Seen from the water, the result reads as a small village of plaster and terracotta. Couples now marry on its terraces above the bay, on the long wooden pier and on the private beach, and their guests can arrive by boat.
The Aga Khan’s coast
The Costa Smeralda was financed by a group of companies led by the Aga Khan, and it runs today for some 20 kilometres along the north-eastern corner of Sardinia. The name first belonged only to a short stretch of shore in the comune of Arzachena, which is still the hotel’s address. Porto Cervo, ten minutes away by car, was laid out to a detailed plan, and the architects who shaped the coast included Michele Busiri Vici, Luigi Vietti, Jacques Couëlle and his son Savin.
Cala di Volpe came early in that programme, on a cove of its own. It has since joined Marriott’s Luxury Collection, but the irregular forms Couëlle gave it survive: low buildings, arches and terraces gathered at the water’s edge. A long wooden pier runs out from the shore into the bay.
A self-taught architect
Couëlle, who lived from 1902 to 1996, was self-taught, and he stayed on the margins of the great architectural movements of his century, Modernism included. His sculptural forms evoke the architecture-sculpture that emerged after the Second World War. He founded a research centre for natural structures in 1946, counted Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí among his friends and was known as the architect of billionaires. Before Sardinia he spent the years from 1955 to 1963 building the village of Castellaras-le-Vieux on the Côte d’Azur, and he worked with his son Savin.
An account retold for the hotel’s sixtieth anniversary has Couëlle lying on the ground when he first arrived, to feel the shape of the land with his body. The plaster was blended with branches from local trees, and the stained glass windows were pieced together from uneven fragments of glass. His stained glass of 1963 is still set into the concrete and plaster wall of the lobby. In the 1970s Savin added a new wing of guest rooms.
Sixty years on the bay
In August 1976 the main unit of The Spy Who Loved Me, the tenth James Bond film and the third with Roger Moore, began work in Sardinia, and the hotel was one of its locations; Valerie Leon played the hotel receptionist in the Sardinian scenes. The film had its royal premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on 7 July 1977.
From 2018 the designers Bruno Moinard and Claire Bétaille, who won a competition for the work, restyled the hotel in phases, beginning with three prototype rooms. Moinard has said that step by step modifications had destroyed the original spirit of the hotel. The work kept Couëlle’s curved walls, rustic beams and large vaulted ceilings. The lobby bar was raised and lengthened for views of the sea and given a skirt of copper and stucco, and a new reception desk was made to match. In the bedrooms the beds were turned to face the sea, limestone floors were laid in an irregular pattern and headboards were plastered in place, and some rooms have canopies of juniper branches and reeds. Ceilings are clad in reed, and most of the furniture was made to measure by local craftsmen.
The hotel marked its sixtieth year in 2023 with a book from Assouline, titled simply Cala di Volpe, which follows the property from its first building to its renovation.
Vows at the water’s edge
A wedding here is arranged around the bay. The tiered terraces face the water and take outdoor ceremonies and open-air receptions. Ceremonies can also take place on the wooden pier, out over the cove, and the private beach and beach club hold vows on the sand and informal receptions by the sea. A third choice is the side of the pool, an Olympic-size saltwater pool that looks across the bay. The private dock means guests can come in by boat, as the hotel’s lunch guests often do.
Civil ceremonies can be held at the hotel, and religious blessings and symbolic ceremonies can be arranged. Indoors, Il Pescatore and the event rooms take civil ceremonies and formal dinners. Weddings start at 80 guests and run to 300, whether seated for dinner or standing for drinks, and the whole hotel can be reserved for the wedding party, every room and event space included. Marriott’s certified wedding planners work with couples on the budget, the menus, the décor and the choice of suppliers.
Dinner on the terraces
Il Pescatore, the hotel’s signature restaurant, opens onto a terrace over the bay. Its cooking is Mediterranean and Sardinian, with grilled fish and seafood from the local coast at the centre, and wedding menus are composed for each couple. The hotel’s own kitchens cater for kosher, vegan and other dietary requirements. Beside the pool, the open-air Cala di Volpe Barbecue serves seated dinners and has space around it for a cocktail reception.
Guests staying for the weekend have more than one kitchen to choose from: the hotel’s other restaurants include Le Grand, Matsuhisa at Cala di Volpe and Beefbar Cala di Volpe, with dining on the terraces and service by the pool.
Staying in the village
There are 121 rooms and suites, all in Couëlle’s rounded style, with whitewashed vaults and terracotta, and many open onto private terraces facing the bay, the sea or the gardens. They range from Classic and Superior doubles to the suites, one of which, the Harrods Suite, was designed by the Harrods Interior Design Studio. The three-bedroom Presidential Suite has a private rooftop terrace with its own swimming pool. There is also a spa.
With the ceremony, the dinner and the bedrooms on one cove, much of the guest list can stay where it celebrates, and a wedding can run across a weekend without a change of hotel. For a free day, Porto Cervo has its Old Port, built in the 1960s as a fishing harbour, and the modern marina where the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda has its clubhouse. Offshore, the seven main islands of the Maddalena Archipelago lie in the Strait of Bonifacio between Sardinia and Corsica and form a national park; Porto Rotondo and Baja Sardinia are also within reach.
Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport is about 30 minutes away by road. The hotel closes for the winter, so a wedding falls within its season, and each wedding is priced on enquiry as a proposal of its own. For more on marrying on the island, see our guide to wedding venues in Sardinia.
A cove of your own
The question that shapes a wedding at Cala di Volpe is whether to take the whole hotel. Taken outright, it gives the wedding party the pier, the terraces, Il Pescatore and all 121 rooms to itself. Read the Hotel Cala di Volpe profile and check your date.
