Our Story
About Us
Gloria and Giovanni, and three houses in Marina di Campo.
The Diadem of Venus
The story that brought us here
The name comes from a myth: Venus, rising out of the Tyrrhenian, let the gems fall from her diadem, and those stones became the islands of the Tuscan Archipelago. Elba is the largest of them.
We are Gloria and Giovanni. Gloria restored Scalinate and Fornaci; Marco, Giovanni's father, restored Montecristo. Giovanni handles the bookings, the arrivals, and the messages that come in at eleven at night.
The three houses are minutes apart, all in Marina di Campo: an apartment on the old steps, a villa with a garden up on Via delle Fornaci, and a villa a minute from the sand.
We are not an agency and we do not manage hundreds of homes. We look after these three: we get them ready ourselves between one arrival and the next, and we hand over the keys in person.
«If you want to know which beach works today, where to eat tonight, or which ferry to take, you ask us. That is the whole of the difference.»
Discover the history of the nameHow we work
Four things we can do
We live here
Marina di Campo, all year round. The advice you get is current, not lifted from a brochure.
You always get us
Gloria and Giovanni. No call centre, no reservations department.
We prepare the houses ourselves
Between one arrival and the next, it is the two of us in there with the sheets.
If we don't know, we say so
On a ferry time or an opening hour we are unsure about, we go and check rather than guess.
An Island of Craftsmanship
Elba and the tradition of beauty
Elba has always worked its own materials: Etruscan iron, Roman granite, the medieval furnaces and, today, a watch factory down in Marina di Campo. It is an island that has always made things, not just looked at the view.
Two of our houses stand on streets that carry that history in their names: Via delle Fornaci, after the old iron furnaces, and the steps the fishermen climbed on their way back from the sea. We did not invent the setting — we just try not to spoil it.