User:Paolo Riccardi (1927-2012)

Paolo Riccardi (Sassari, 12 November 1927 - Bolgheri, 9 July 2012) was a leading lawyer, entrepreneur and manager. He was among the pioneers of the Costa Smeralda.

Carreer

Paolo Riccardi was the backbone of Prince Agha Khan's great touristic undertaking. Right arm of the prince and president of almost all the companies linked to the Costa Smeralda (in particular Alisarda, later Meridiana) a man of extraordinary popularity, since 1961 (the Consortium of the Costa Smerada was born the following year, and now celebrates sixty years ) had linked its destiny to that of the Costa Smeralda: in such a tight and radical way that its break with the Aga Khan, in 1982, seemed almost to compromise the future of the initiative: and not coincidentally, perhaps, from that moment a series of resignations and abandonments that culminated in the withdrawal of Karim himself from the top of the enterprise.

When he came into contact with the Costa - not even a newborn - at most nascent, he was already a very popular lawyer in Sassari, where his family of bourgeois origins and traditions (therefore with some Masonic offshoot, never compromised with fascism) was well known and where he himself, Paolo, was very famous since his university days.

For almost twenty years he was general secretary of the Costa Smeralda. From 1963 to 1983: twenty years of fire, in which a consortium of financiers and wealthy gentlemen, owner of 55 kilometers of what was then called Monti di Mola, took billions, architects and commitment and made them become the Costa Smeralda. A group of capitalists from half of Europe, who had had the foresight to put an oriental prince as their leader: head of a religion widespread above all in Pakistan but present in many parts of the world.

Mixed almost every day with the workers of the construction site, but reluctant to have personal contacts with regional councilors and even with the mayors of that Arzachena of which he is also an honorary citizen (but in one of the hundred moments of dissent Riccardi had already collected 530 signatures to make of Porto Cervo an autonomous municipality). It is almost a miracle that two such strong personalities coexisted, collaborated and fought for twenty years, until that 13 February 1982 in Saint Moritz, when Paolo slammed the door and, offended, refused to make peace even in front of the gift of a horse (the Aga Khan stable is one of the most prestigious in the world).

In reality, one of the most singular characters of this environment had involved him in the adventures of tourist capitalism: Raphael Neville, count of Berlanga and of the Duero, who one day in 1959 had burst into his studio and led him to go around the whole of Sardinia in search of his "dream beach" (he had then found it on the edge of Palau, where he founded an aristocratic village, baptizing it with his own name). And from there Riccardi became co-founder of the current Porto Rafael.

Honors

Honorary Citizen of Arzachena

Colonel of Kentucky

Commander of the Republic

Honorary Consul of the Netherlands

Works

At the court of the Aga Khan Memories of the Costa Semralda