The chic, affordable Tuscan coast where Rome's stylish set holiday

Times

18-07-2025

Remember the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where Reg asks: what have the Romans ever done for us? He eventually conceded that they'd introduced sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the freshwater system and public health.
I'll tell you something they didn't do, though. They didn't tell us about their favourite holiday playground. Monte Argentario, the panettone-shaped peninsula in southern Tuscany, is where stylish Romans spend their summers. And the arrival of La Roqqa, an attention-seeking hotel, means this lovely destination's cover has finally been blown.
While the rustic commune, a couple of hours' drive northeast from the capital, is hardly undiscovered, it certainly qualifies as being lesser known. When I tell friends, all with well-worn passports, that I am bound for Argentario, most think I am guilty of a pretentious pronunciation of Argentina. But the super-chic Romans I meet for lunch on the terrace of the capital's equally super-chic Bulgari hotel know exactly where I'm going.
After a glass of wine, they admit they find it funny that we Brits rush, lemming-like, to the Amalfi coast, which they dismiss as too crowded and too expensive. What I would pay for a glass of very average barolo in Positano, they tell me, will buy me a delicious supper of fresh-off-the-boat fish in Porto Ercole or Porto Santo Stefano, Argentario's main towns.
That afternoon, as Rome recedes in my car's rear-view mirror, so too does the 21st century. Cinematic ripples of pine-clad Tuscan hills fill the windscreen, pin-cushioned by the occasional ramshackle farmhouse. Eventually I reach the intriguing tomboli, Argentario's twin sandbars, which were formed by a long-running spat between the sea and the Albegna River. They now act as causeways that unfurl like strands of tagliatelle, luring motorists onwards. So while Argentario was once an island, thanks to the tomboli it's technically now a peninsula. There's something about crossing that causeway, flanked by the flamingo-filled Orbetello Lagoon, that leads to an immediate feeling of contentment.
Argentario once attracted the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Slim Aarons and David Bowie but by the late 20th century had inexplicably fallen off the international radar. It has remained A-list for Italians, though, with the country's elite docking in Porto Ercole's marina, which is full of gleaming giga-yachts.
Nature played a blinder in Porto Ercole, taking a deep scoop out of the shoreline and producing a seductive bay. Its hilltops are crowned with fortifications built by the Spanish in the 16th century. Its old town — all narrow streets and hidden piazzas — sits on one steep hillside and caramel-toned townhouses lead down to its seafront promenade. Here fairground stalls, an old-fashioned merry-go-round, shops selling apple-shaped wicker trays and trattoria for alfresco aperitivi deliver top-class passeggiata with views of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
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La Roqqa's rooftop bar offers a perspective on the lot, with fancy cocktails created with Italian-made spirits on the side. The hotel, once a run-down three-star, is now owned by the Swedish entertainment and property entrepreneur Conni Jonsson. After a three-year renovation, it reopened last year as a 55-room design hotel.
Its interiors combine la dolce vita flourishes with Scandi minimalism. Take the all-white lobby, with its eye-catching staircase-cum-sculpture and standout pieces such as Arco and Toio floor lamps, a Utrecht armchair by Cassina, and a lipstick-red Gaetano Pesce Up armchair. Bedrooms, meanwhile, are lime-plastered in calming colours inspired by the area's natural palette of blue waters, emerald forests and terracotta earth. The custom-made furniture is clean-lined and contemporary, doing nothing to distract from the views of sea and gardens through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Marble bathrooms are small but stocked with swishy Ortigia products from Sicily (including useful tins of sun lotion). On the sustainability front, there's a filtered water tap in every bedroom and thoughtful collaborations such as a kitchen garden run by L'Orto Giusto, a social agriculture project that employs people with disabilities.
Its produce is used to great effect at Scirocco, the rooftop restaurant, where the executive chef Francesco Ferretti serves refined Tuscan cuisine. Service is enthusiastic and smiley, if a little siesta-slow. I begin with the watermelon tataki, its sweetness countered by the sharpness of wasabi, and follow with the creamy cuttlefish and handmade pasta.
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A five-minute walk from the hotel is its beach club, Isolotto. This cute cove is backed by snooker-smooth lawn terraces peppered with loungers. Hotel guests have complimentary loungers; most locals go BYO and park up by the water's edge. Everyone shares the bar and restaurant, both of which have views as distractingly gorgeous as the clientele. The water is crystal clear and hours float by with me feeling smug about being outnumbered by very cool Italians.
One morning I tackle the short but steep climb to Forte Filippo, the 16th-century fortress that guards one of Porto Ercole's promontories. I see only four others on the ascent along a dirt path where wild rosemary and juniper lurk between the long grasses. My reward is a star-shaped masterpiece complete with moats. I gaze out on the rugged coastline's pine-clad knuckles, as Spanish sentries must have 500 years before.
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Later I take the Caravaggio Trail in the historic centre of the old town. One of Italy's greatest painters, Caravaggio had a lively personal life — he was also a pimp, a drunk and a brawler. In 1606 he was evading justice after murdering Ranuccio Tomassoni in a fight over a game of racquets. Four years later he washed up in Porto Ercole, where he died aged 38.
Take your pick on the precise cause: murder by the Knights of Malta, malaria, lead poisoning from his paints, syphilis or sepsis from a knife wound inflicted during yet another scuffle. He may have breathed his last on Feniglia beach, a 7km expanse ten minutes outside town, though it was more likely in the Hospital of Santa Croce. A death shrouded in mystery, I reckon it's the way he would've wanted it.
His trail proves something of a mystery too. I follow the signs through a ramble of stone lanes, houses with crumbling plasterwork and jasmine-scented squares, but as far as I can see they don't lead to a single Caravaggio landmark. Perhaps I miss a succession of plaques but the nonchalance of a tourist trail leading nowhere feels very Porto Ercole to me.
Another day I take the one-hour boat ride to Isola del Giglio (from £22 return; giglioinfo.it). This 24 sq km isle found the wrong sort of fame in 2012 when the Costa Concordia ran aground and partially sank here, killing 32 people. It's hard to marry that tragedy with the scene as my boat docks. It's so nostalgia-laden, the film producer Richard Curtis might have prepped the portside for one of his rose-tinted tracking shots.
Store owners have draped floaty dresses and colourful ceramics around their doorways like bunting, fishermen tend their boats and waiters their tables. Talking of which, my lunch of black spaghetti, cockles and yellow tomatoes sprinkled with cured fish roe at Doria is deliciously generous and a bargain at £17 (mains from £15; ristorantedoria.it).
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For an island of 1,400 Giglio punches well above its weight for arts and culture, with a summer theatre season, a wine festival, an opera festival and a film festival. I wish I was staying for sunset drinks on the terrace of La Guardia hotel, which sits on a granite outcrop above the port. Flaminia Pérez del Castillo and Flavio Caprabianca were high-flying ad executives in Rome who summered on Giglio. When the hotel came on the market in 2017, they took it as their cue to take up permanent residency and have brought pared-back panache to the property (B&B doubles from £280; laguardiahotel.it).
Everyone tells me I must visit Capalbio, a medieval walled village 30 minutes' drive east from Porto Ercole and another favourite of Rome's smart set. Around every corner lies yet another stage set Curtis couldn't better, a grand Renaissance church, an intriguing miniature gothic door or an ornately decorated bench. I nip into one bar where the staff don't speak much English but we get by using the international languages of smiles and alcohol. They usher me through to the terrace for a glass of prosecco overlooking a patchwork of olive groves and woodlands. At Il Frantoio — all dark woods and whitewashed walls — I dine on spicy parmigiana (mains from £26; frantoiocapalbio.com).
Before I leave Argentario I recall the final thing the Romans did for Life of Brian's Reg: they brought peace. I certainly found it in this corner of Tuscany.Susan d'Arcy was a guest of La Roqqa, which has B&B doubles from £350 (laroqqa.com). Fly to Rome