As it prepares to celebrate its first 60 years, the Costa Smeralda is still one of the best known tourist destinations in the world.

It was March 14, 1962 when in Olbia, in front of the notary Mario Altea, Prince Karim Aga Khan, who at the time was the 25-year-old Imam of the Nizarite Ismaili, together with five other founding members, gave birth to the Costa Smeralda Consortium. Non-profit, it had as its objective to control and govern the urban, territorial and architectural development of the destination, 55 kilometers of coast in the north-east of Sardinia, still one of the destinations of many VIPs who have animated the worldly life in the emerald summers.

With the first luxury hotels, the works for the construction of roads, docks in the port, the airport, then the medical center, the golf course, the Stella Maris church had also started.

"Prince Aga Khan was and always will be the one who gave birth to a dream - recalls the president of the Costa Smeralda Consortium, Renzo Persico - creating a timeless tourist myth. having been able to preserve and improve, adapting to social, demographic, technological and environmental changes, a tourist destination that thanks to its private organization and the connotation of its territory has managed to be a competitive reference in step with the evolution of tourism needs of international luxury ".

(Unioneonline / ss)