MADE IN ITALY
“MAKE ME THE biggest yacht in the world – bigger than anyone has ever seen,” he commanded. It was a mould-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.
In the decades since that ship’s momentous launch, Viareggio has become the world’s hub, and the vast majority of those in this town of just 62,000 people. The phenomenon’s progenitor – now named Azimut Benetti – is the world’s most active superyacht producer. At the start of 2021, it had 3.5km under construction. Not far behind, at 3.1km, was its Viareggio neighbour Sanlorenzo. Indeed, dozens of famed firms sit jigsawed together here around a street that’s barely 0.8km long: Mangusta, Rossinavi, Codecasa and more. Via Michele Coppino, next to the Darsena, or harbour, is often called the yachtsman’s answer to Rodeo Drive. The comparison seems a stretch at first sight: the nondescript strip, rimmed by higgledy-piggledy facades, doesn’t exactly ooze panache.
