In This Part of Tuscany, No Souvenirs Necessary
Explorer
By SHIVANI VORA MAY 26, 2016


We arrived in Punta Ala, Italy, with a packed itinerary. My daughter Meenakshi, then 7, and I were on a weeklong August getaway, and the idea was to use the Tuscan seaside resort as a base to explore the region’s many medieval villages.

I had arranged walking tours and cathedral visits galore and figured that the ocean would be the ideal setting for a break from the sightseeing and summer heat.

The trip, however, turned out to be nothing like I had planned.

Instead of sticking to our schedule of excursions from the tiny inlet, we ended up never leaving it. With scenery so picturesque it was hard not to linger, and we spent lazy days swimming in the shimmering sea, savoring sunsets and enjoying relaxed seafood feasts.

Punta Ala is on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the heart of Maremma in southwest Tuscany, about a two-hour drive north of Rome, two hours southwest of Florence and four hours south of Milan. With only about 400 inhabitants, it is part of the town of Castiglione della Pescaia. Italians have been vacationing here for decades, but not many others even know of it.

They should, because it’s about as idyllic and photogenic as seaside spots come.

The ocean is a collection of varying blue and green shades, and its more than four miles of beaches have sand so silky that you have to remind yourself you’re in Tuscany, not on a faraway island. Views of Elba, the isle where Napoleon was exiled, and deep green hills that frame the water add to the appeal, and a small strip along the marina dotted with only a few restaurants — the closest thing to a downtown — makes it feel even more removed from the rest of the world.

Development began in 1962 when the Milan-based hotelier Luigi Gallia opened the Gallia Palace Hotel on a hill near the beach. Then, in 1964, the Pesenti family, which runs the multinational cement company Italcementi, opened the Golf Club Punta Ala about a mile from the beach. But the buzz about its being a peaceful getaway started to become noticeable only after the Baglioni Hotel Cala del Porto opened in 1973.

Cala del Porto’s owner, Roberto Polito, stumbled on Punta Ala when the hotel owner he was working for in Switzerland sent him to a nearby town, Follonica, to open a property for Swiss tourists.

Over Champagne and a deep orange sunset in his sprawling apartment on the top floor of Cala del Porto, he told me the story of his discovery. “I was driving around and saw this magnificent, empty beach with a wooden pier and got the idea to build a hotel where people could come and stay while they enjoyed the natural beauty,” he said.

The 37-room upscale property he built that overlooks the marina helped to spur tourism, but more life came to the area later that decade and into the 1980s when the Pesentis built apartments and villas that chic Italian city dwellers bought to use as their vacation homes.

Today’s laid-back beach culture, however, where a well-dressed crowd often roams barefoot, can be traced back to the two hoteliers. A beach club with a restaurant that’s still thriving was part of Gallia Palace’s opening, and under his hospitality company Baglioni, Mr. Polito opened a beach club called Alleluja Cala del Porto in 1980.

Next door, there’s another Baglioni beach club, La Vela. The name means sail in Italian and is taken from the shape of the contemporary building that houses the club. It has two levels; a bar and a small spa are on the ground floor and a rooftop restaurant with ocean panoramas is on the second.

All three clubs are popular hangouts for Punta Ala regulars; Meenakshi and I passed much of our time there.

Midday meals were leisurely. Unlike most of Tuscany, where hearty pastas and meats are staples, the cuisine here is Mediterranean and emphasizes seafood.

At one lunch at Alleluja, I started with pinzimonio, crisp halved raw radishes and sticks of carrots and cucumbers from a local farm, along with an avocado mousse dip. Then came a plate of grilled calamari and octopus sprinkled with coarse salt and another course with two kinds of shrimp in a light pool of peppery Tuscan olive oil — tiny, sweet red prawns and giant, meaty langoustines. Slices of steak-like porcini mushrooms foraged from the hills followed the seafood, and to drink, it was chilled and fruity Tuscan white wine.

Another lunch was at La Vela with Roland Baranes, with whom I had connected through mutual friends. He runs a Milan-based cosmetics packaging business but owns an apartment in Punta Ala and spends the summer here with his family, a tradition he has stuck with for more than four decades. As we shared salt-encrusted baked sea bream accompanied by grilled zucchini and radicchio, he praised the simplicity of the food and of the destination.

“If you ask me how Punta Ala has changed since I was young, I wouldn’t really have anything to say,” he said. “The thing is that it hasn’t changed, and that’s what makes it so special.”

I got a better understanding of what he was talking about the next morning on a hike through Bandite di Scarlino, a regional park spanning more than 20,000 acres that’s partly in Punta Ala.

My guide, Ellen Sutherland, who first moved to Punta Ala in 1974 from Houston after falling in love with and marrying a local, led me up a steep trail until we reached a promontory along the ocean. We walked until we hit a clearing in the woods that was full of families and couples toting coolers and beach chairs. Ms. Sutherland prodded me to follow them for the big reveal: Cala Violina, an inviting crescent-shaped beach with water so clear that the small fish swimming in it had no place to hide.

The closest parking lot was more than a mile away, and the only hint of commercialism was a small truck selling snacks, but these beachgoers were undeterred by the walk and lack of amenities. “It was this exact scene when I came first to Punta Ala,” Ms. Sutherland said. “People have always been drawn to this beach because it feels secretive.”

Our two-hour excursion ended at her 18th-century farmhouse, which she has turned into a four-room bed-and-breakfast called Boccadalma. The hilltop property is surrounded by olive trees, and during harvest season, Ms. Sutherland invites her guests to help pick olives and press them into oil.


Active travelers can bike or hike through Bandite’s many trails or play a round at Golf Club Punta Ala. Also, given that it’s in Tuscany, winery tours are popular. Rocca di Frassinello, a winery designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, and the Bolgheri region, home to some of the country’s most prestigious labels such as Ornellaia, are both less than an hour’s drive away. It’s also possible to rent a boat to visit Elba to scuba dive along the northern part of the island.

And there is no shortage of medieval villages to see, like the Etruscan-Roman Roselle or Pitigliano, famous for the Jewish community that settled there hundreds of years ago.

On our last night, my daughter reminded me that we were missing the souvenirs I had promised her. I took her to the marina in search of a store where we could buy the requisite postcards and T-shirts and stopped to ask a man toting his toddler son for a suggestion. He told us that he had been coming to Punta Ala since he was a young boy and had yet to see a shop for tourists. “The people who visit come back again and again,” he said, “so they don’t need a memory to take home.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/travel/punta-ala-tuscany-maremma.html?hpw&rref=travel&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well