Each year Tripadvisor releases its “Best of the Best Beaches.” A global roll call of sun, sand, and superlatives and, as ever, Italy makes the cut, This time twice, and yet not quite at the top.
Sardinia’s La Pelosa Beach comes in at number 8 for its pale sand and water so clear and shallow it allows families to wade far from the shore. The Spiaggia dei Conigli in Lampedusa at number 18, feels even closer to myth. With white sand, water in surreal shades of blue, and a hush that invites stillness, it is, by any reasonable measure, extraordinary. And yet: eighteenth.
Spiaggia dei Conigli - Lampedusa
Two beaches in the top 20 should be a triumph, and of course it is. Still, for a country that has made an art form of beauty, there’s a faint note of regret. Eighth? Eighteenth? Really? Because how do you measure the way light settles on Sardinian water at dusk, or the quiet of Lampedusa in the early morning?
Rankings, for all their authority, don't always hit the mark and anyway Italy, one suspects, isn’t overly concerned, as it has never needed lists to define it. Still - eighth and eighteenth. The popular vote can, obviously, have its off days.
Pamela McCourt Francescone
Executive Editor
