Cala Mar Morto: Below a Tower That Hosted Taylor and Burton

Italy | Tuscany | Grosseto | Monte Argentario

The Torre di Cala Piccola standing above Cala Mar Morto was built in 1589, part of a defensive network of roughly twenty coastal watchtowers Philip II of Spain established in 1559 to protect the State of the Presidi, the small strip of Tuscan coastline Spain retained after the fall of the Republic of Siena. For centuries the tower served purely defensive purposes, watching for danger approaching from the sea and signaling to neighboring towers like Capo d’Uomo when trouble appeared. Its story took a considerably more glamorous turn in 1957, when entrepreneur Carlo Bertuzzi and his partner Nina Benini purchased the tower and built a private club around it, opening in 1960 as a genuine sanctuary for wealthy and famous guests. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton conducted their own passionate romance here during that era, and the tower went on to welcome prominent figures from politics and entertainment for decades afterward.

Cala Mar Morto, the “Dead Sea” cove, takes its own name from the natural barrier of outer reefs that tames the open sea into peaceful, mirror-like saltwater pools, a genuinely fitting description once you’re standing in water this still. I found something striking about descending toward a beach this wild and unmanaged directly beneath a clifftop retreat that once drew some of the twentieth century’s most photographed couples, the tower itself now housing a permanent exhibition on the very defensive fortifications it was originally built to serve.

Cala Mar Morto’s Lunar Landscape of Stone and Natural Pools

Cala Mar Morto offers nothing resembling a conventional beach, large smooth stones, dark pebbles, and weathered limestone forming a natural breakwater that shelters an inner basin of completely still water. I found rock shoes genuinely essential here, and a small mineral spring trickling through the rocks mid-bay added a distinctly geological character I hadn’t encountered at other Argentario coves.

Water Clear Enough to Feel Like an Aquarium

Protected by the outer reefs and the offshore Isola Rossa, the inner pools stayed genuinely warm and still, and beyond that protective barrier, I found the water deepening into electric turquoise and cobalt, snorkeling among the rock crevices rewarding the effort with sea bream, octopus, and colorful anemones.

No Facilities Beyond a Single Trailhead Kiosk

Given the completely undeveloped nature of this cove, I packed my own food and water for every visit, relying on the small refreshment kiosk at the trailhead parking area for anything I hadn’t brought myself. Given how wild and unmanaged this beach remains, dogs would likely be fine here on a leash following Italy’s standard rule for public beaches, though the demanding rocky terrain makes this a genuinely difficult spot to manage one comfortably.

Getting There and the Descent Down

Reaching Cala Mar Morto means driving onto Monte Argentario via the SS1 Aurelia toward Albinia or Orbetello, crossing the Giannella spit or the lagoon causeway toward Porto Santo Stefano, then following the Strada Panoramica west past the Torre di Cala Piccola toward Le Scorpacciate; roadside parking sits near a small kiosk and villa entrance, followed by a fifteen-to-twenty-minute hike down a 500-meter dirt path through coastal vegetation, with a final fifty meters of smooth stones requiring sturdy footwear to reach the sheltered pools. Anyone touring this stretch of Monte Argentario will find Feniglia Orbetello a reasonable drive away, sharing the same peninsula while offering a genuinely different, sandy contrast to this cove’s dramatic stone landscape.

Standing Below Where Old Fortifications Became a Love Story’s Setting

By the time I climbed back up from the pools on my last visit, I thought about that tower above me shifting from military necessity to Hollywood romance and back again into a small museum of its own original purpose, the beach below it apparently indifferent to which version of the story anyone chooses to remember it by.