Mediterranean Sea

11 records, and the only water where the buildings are older than the hospitality. A sea fort, a monastery island, a villa colony, Paul Ricard's invented island village at Bendor: five of these entries sit on the Heritage shelf, more than any other region.

Genuine private islands are almost absent here, and that scarcity is the region's defining fact. Tagomago off Ibiza is one house on sixty hectares, twenty minutes from one of the most crowded coastlines in Europe. Everything else is either a villa colony where the hotel is a tenant, as at Cavallo, or a lagoon island where the city is minutes away, as at San Clemente.

Season is brutal and honest. Most of these properties close for half the year, the crossings are short, and the water is busy in August with boats that answer to nobody. A Mediterranean island buys separation from the shore, not from the sea.