Italy
Elba
Napoleon's island of exile hides iron-red beaches beneath a granite mountain you ride up standing.
The ferry rounds the headland and the island opens up: terraced vineyards above iron-stained cliffs, granite shoulders dropping into water that shifts between emerald and ink. Elba smells of rosemary, pine resin and salt. The beaches change colour cove by cove, white sand to black magnetite to rust-orange pebbles.
Elba is the largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, a short ferry from Piombino and a different world on landing. Napoleon ruled his miniature kingdom here for roughly three hundred days in 1814 and 1815, and both his residences, the Villa dei Mulini above Portoferraio and the country Villa di San Martino, are open to visit. Long before him, Etruscan and Roman furnaces fed on the island's iron, which still stains whole beaches orange along the old mining coast. Inland, an open-basket cable car sways two standing passengers at a time up Monte Capanne, the island's 1,019-metre roof.
Couple
Hire a small boat, claim a cove, and spend the afternoon between granite and sea; the island is big enough to explore and small enough to feel private.
Friends
Diving, ridge walks, vineyard tastings and a shared villa above a harbour keep an active group moving all week.
Family
The southern bays are sheltered, the iron-rich coves reward a snorkel, and Napoleon's houses cover the rainy morning.
- Napoleon's Villa dei Mulini and Villa di San Martino survive from his three hundred days of island rule.
- The Monte Capanne cable car lifts two standing passengers per open basket to the 1,019-metre summit.
- Iron mined here since Etruscan times still colours the eastern beaches rust-orange.
- Aleatico, the island's own sweet red, soaks its signature cake, the schiaccia briaca.
Schiaccia briaca, a cake drunk on Aleatico wine and studded with pine nuts and walnuts, appears at every island festival.
Caciucco, the ferocious five-fish stew of the Livorno coast, turns up wherever the day boats land.
Kerama Islands
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Bonito
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Capitólio
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Europe's largest high-altitude meadow, wildflowers to the horizon beneath Dolomite spires.
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Roman floor mosaics of bikini-clad athletes, buried under mud, revealed after sixteen centuries.