Panarea

The island is indeed selective, and admission requires more finesse than writing a seven-figure check: if you want to own one of Panarea’s few coveted houses, you need to know someone who knows someone… A famous family name and a nice bank account just don’t cut it here. “Sales are rare here and we only set up by co-option, it’s all word of mouth,” says Borghese, “so people who don’t suit us, are simply not allowed.”

There’s not much to do on the island – which is entirely pedestrian and has fewer than 300 inhabitants – but that’s the whole point.
Days on Panarea are spent barefoot, often on wooden boats (gozzo), anchored beneath secluded rocky coves for lazy late afternoon swims, or on jagged Lisca Bianca.
Local tradition has it that couples who swim here under the Arco degli Innamorati will stay together forever.

Late afternoon is a good time to browse the few stores in San Pietro, which, along with Ditella and Drauto, are Panarea’s only real hamlets, all on the eastern side.
The island’s custom-made leather spartan shoes with colorful straps that wrap around the leg have acquired iconic status around the world.

Just after 10 p.m., everyone crowds into the Bridge Sushi Bar for dinner.
Flip-flops and caftans as dress code with the particular type of tanned skin that only weeks of saltwater swimming can produce.

After dinner, it’s time for a dance party on the terrace of the Hotel Raya, which usually hosts a typical Mediterranean jet-set mix: drunken teenagers from Naples, grizzled playboys, young noblemen from Europe and Russia, imported models and Uma Thurman or Heidi Klum lounging on cream-colored beds.

Much of Panarea’s charm comes from what it doesn’t have.
“You don’t have to have Baccarat glasses,” says Irene Bulgari, whose mother bought a house on Borghese Road 26 years ago rather than in Capri and Porto Ecole.
“When I first arrived in 1980, I thought, Oh, my God, what is this? The view is so beautiful, and the terrace and the wine… that’s it. You don’t need anything more.”

Paparazzi are few and far between here, mainly because they can’t find accommodation, and the island’s only real beach, an overcrowded sample of dark golden sand called Zimmari, is a harrowing 40-minute walk under a scorching sun.

Yet you can’t be too careful – and in a place defined largely by what it lacks, people make a point of talking about what they don’t do.
Ramuntcho Matta lives in a breathtaking bohemian complex: a series of five small cottages overlooking Calcara beach at the island’s northernmost tip.
His father, the late Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta, arrived here by chance in 1954 aboard a small boat with a case of champagne.
Matta keeps the house his father bought – for $200 – as a residence for artists and intellectuals, a kind of anti-Raya.
“We never go to the Raya,” Matta explains.
“If you want to be really fashionable, you have to keep it pretty secret.”

Visconti agrees: during Panarea’s peak end-of-summer season, she goes to the grocery store early in the morning, when everyone else is still asleep, and spends her evenings dining on her terrace with friends.
“I don’t know why people always talk about Panarea as some crazy social place,” she says.
“It’s really not like that.”
Of course, it all depends on whether you know where to be seen or, more to the point, where to hide.
Panarea, the island where the jetset stands apart from the rest of the jetset.