TUSCANY BY THE SEA

The coast of Tuscany—once considered wild and remote— remains an insider secret.

- Lee Marshall

WHAT PICTURE springs to mind when you hear the word Tuscany? I'm going to take a gamble that it involves at least one of the following: A country villa or trattoria. Vineyards or olive groves and the liquids they produce. Cypress trees marching in single file up the side of a hill. Michelangelo's David.

Cocktails on the beach? Not so much.

Running up the thigh of Italy for about 250 miles, the Tuscan coast seems to somehow float free of its mother region—and the associations it evokes. As if lazy days on a boat and spaghetti with clams were somehow un-Tuscan. It doesn't help that some of the area's beach resorts don't exactly ooze local character. Forte dei Marmi is a seaside village that was turned into a Tuscan Hamptons by well-heeled Florentines (who call it “Forte”). Viareggio, one of the first towns in Italy to service the fashion for sea bathing in the 19th century, is today a family resort living on Belle Époque memories.

But one part of Tuscany-by-the-Sea is still profoundly Tuscan and still manages to embrace the newcomers without selling its soul. This happening place doesn't have a single name, or a single identity. Situated at the southernmost end of the region's coastline, it's made up of three adjacent areas. Each has its own habitués, its own charm, its own scene: Giglio Island; the Monte Argentario peninsula; and a long stretch of beach, dune, and rural hinterland that centers on a cute hill town called Capalbio.

When Mediterranean villa rental specialist Huw Beaugié of the Thinking Traveller visited Argentario and Capalbio on a reconnaissance trip in the spring of 2023, he was impressed. Not just by the houses, but by the people who were heading there and the sense that this was a destination that is “at the beginning of something,” he told me. “It felt very much like Puglia in 2009.”

The inland part of this stretch, known as La Maremma, was once a marshy swamp where malaria was rife and