Porto Cervo, Hotel Cala di Volpe

Porto Cervo is the main settlement of the Costa Smeralda Consortium, founded in 1962, which has profoundly transformed a previously sparsely populated area of Gallura. The various settlements were built exclusively for tourism purposes through the design and implementation of a system defined and self-sufficient to meet the needs of the guests.
The promenade and the small square are the nodal points of the settlement and have a sinuous development that is repeated in the surrounding villas. The buildings are embedded in nature and characterized by external walls left rustic, deliberately irregular angles, plasters mixed with ground granite and natural pigments, unfinished wood, according to the rules of an architecture that is only apparently “spontaneous”, also based on the decorative function of irregular pillar arches.
Among the most representative buildings in Porto Cervo is the Cala di Volpe hotel, completed in 1963, designed by Jacques Couëlle. Located in a protected cove, the building is characterized by what was later called “Mediterranean” style and has rooms and apartments with a terrace overlooking the sea, without the guest being visible from anywhere. Some details such as the stained glass windows, the ceramics, the refined flooring, the antique furniture suggest an extremely refined environment.

History of studies
A review of studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the fact sheet in the volume of the “History of Art in Sardinia” on nineteenth-century architecture (2001).

Bibliography by
F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy to the end of the 1900s. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheet 166.