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The Italian isle of Sardinia is a contradictory and mysterious place. Writer D. H. Lawrence once described it as “lost between Europe and Africa and belonging to nowhere.” In 1979, scientists on the ancient land discovered human remains dating from 150,000 years ago. Today, still scattered around the island are more than 8,000 Nuraghe, cone-shaped stone towers, built by Sardinia’s original Nuragic civilization during the Bronze Age. DNA testing done on desiccated grapes proved them to be more than 3,000 years old, the oldest in the world. (Those grapes are found in Sardinia’s rich Cannonau wine, frequently credited as one of the reasons the inhabitants of Sardinia’s interior rural areas have some of the highest life expectancies in the world.)

Despite its intriguing history, Sardinia is best known for its glamorous Costa Smeralda (Emerald Coast), a relatively small area on the island’s northeast side, which became famous less than fifty years ago. In fact, when the international playboy Prince Karim Aga Khan IV discovered the Costa Smeralda in the early 1960s, it was a remote and wild stretch of dramatic, windblown granite formations and coves lapped by bright-green and turquoise waters that was known only to a few yachtie insiders. In 1962, the Aga Khan and his friends started buying up a substantial amount (eventually thirty-four miles of coastline) of pine-, thyme- and rosemary-covered coastland with the goal of creating the world’s ultimate jet-set resort. He hired architects, including Jacques Couelle, to build lavish hotels, villas and Porto Cervo, a glittering complex of luxury shops and superyachts. The Costa Smeralda has since changed hands, now managed by Starwood and owned by Colony Capital, but it’s still as prestigious as ever—a European summer destination on par with St.-Tropez.