Castiglioncello is a famous elegant tourist location, which has been awarded The Blue Flag several times (just as Vada and Cala de’ Medici). It stands on a promontory immersed in the greenery, stretching out on the Tyrrhenian Sea.
It was an important military center dating back to the Etruscan times, thanks to its strategic position on the sea. In Roman times, it hosted luxurious otium villas. Its success as a tourist resort began at the end of the nineteenth century by the Florentine critic and patron Diego Martelli, who accommodated the main exponents of the Macchiaioli artistic movement in his beloved estate. Between 1861 and 1870, Telemaco Signorini, Giuseppe Abbati, Odoardo Borrani, Raffaello Sernesi, and Giovanni Fattori – to mention but a few of the most famous artists - stayed there for a long time, portraying the ancient and wild beauty of its nature.
Castinglioncello was visited not only by painters, but also by writers. In the early twentieth century, it took on the current appearance, filling up with elegant Art Nouveau villas overlooking the sea. Since the half of that century, it became one of the favorite holiday resorts of many personalities in the field of cinema (it is impossible to forget about the film ‘Il Sorpasso' (English: The Easy Life, 1962)), and that was its most prestigious season.
Still relying on these traditions, Castiglioncello proposes itself as a quality tourist destination thanks to the many cultural activities promoted by the Municipal Administration in the field of (also) contemporary art history, entertainment, cinema, and literature.
Castello Pasquini is the heart of these initiatives. It is a grand neo-Gothic building, raised at the end of the nineteenth century on the villa that once belonged to Diego Martelli, and immersed in the Mediterranean vegetation of its private park.
