With the start of 2025, Codecasa Shipyards celebrate 200 years in business, always and solely managed by the Codecasa family. It is an important milestone that makes us very proud.
Codecasa Shipyards were founded in 1825 by master shipwright Giovanni Battista Codecasa in the city of Viareggio, the age-old cradle of Italian shipbuilding. He was followed in 1902 by Giovanni Battista Codecasa, known as Tistino, who carried the shipyard through the hard times of the Second World War, showing a remarkable ability to adapt that would prove a winning factor for the company. Tistino was succeeded by his sons Ugo and Sandro, who enjoyed the Viareggio of the 1960s, a temple of Italian seafaring. Initially the business focused on building sailing ships, reaching a record of over 50 vessels, as well as fishing boats, pontoons, barges and craft of every kind, by 1946. On Ugo’s death in 1973 the baton passed to his son Fulvio Codecasa, a key figure in the life of the shipyard. Fulvio adopted a winning strategy and a drive to diversify that would bring Codecasa to the centre of the international scene, combining the production of work boats with that of luxury motor yachts. In 1985 he was joined by his daughter Fulvia, later followed by her younger sister Elena. Their husbands, Ennio Buonomo and Fabio Lofrese, then joined the management of the company, steadily continuing the family tradition. During the 2000s the well-traced path was then followed by Fulvia and Ennio’s sons, Matteo and Niccolò, recently joined by their daughter Chiara. From 1973 to the end of the 1990s the Shipyard launched very different yachts. We can mention the motor yachts of those years, Entrepreneur and Casabella, which cruise in American waters. In 1975 came the yacht Fair Play, a 27 m that inaugurated Codecasa’s own style. Then came the 62 m Luisella, the largest yacht Codecasa had ever built and its first charter yacht. These were followed by Blue Velvet in 1994, Charly Coppers in 1996, which inaugurated the new 48/51-metre series, and many other successes. Alongside the innovation of its yachts, Codecasa Shipyards also expanded in Viareggio: in addition to the Ugo Codecasa Shipyard, created in 1977, the Codecasa Due Shipyard was opened in 1982 on the shipyard’s historic site in the Darsena Toscana, and in 1987 the Codecasa 3 Shipyard was added in the Nuova Darsena. From 2011 a new facility in the Navicelli area of Pisa was also added, a large complex of four hangars better suited to building large vessels.
In the early 2000s Codecasa revealed a new surprise, entering the sector of large fast aluminium open yachts with everything in place for guaranteed success. The first model, launched in 2004, was built for a very knowledgeable owner: none other than Fulvio Codecasa. The yacht took the name of his wonderful wife, Maria Carla. The owners of the yachts built by Codecasa over the years are its best ambassadors: in Italy we find Giorgio Armani, who parted with his 2003 Mariù to replace her in 2008 with Maìn; Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce with their first Regina d’Italia of 2006, followed by the Regina d’Italia of 2019; Cavaliere Leonardo del Vecchio, who cruised on his second Codecasa, named Moneikos; Mr Paolo Bulgari’s Magari of 2011 and Piersilvio Berlusconi’s Dragoluna of 2019. The list of clients from all over the world is long, and such trust is not the fruit of chance but the result of the shipyard’s excellence and reliability.
Carrying forward this wonderful story in the yachting world, generation after generation, on the one hand brings the weight of many responsibilities, but on the other allows us to remember and savour the moments of the past as the result of sound, well-judged choices, great courage and strong determination. Fulvio has long followed a very precise course that has allowed him to become one of the key players in large yachting and to build an independent family system that overlooks the port of Viareggio like a lighthouse dominating and illuminating the city. Codecasa is not a traditional shipyard: it enjoys unrivalled build quality and product recognisability, and centres all its work on loyalty – the loyalty of clients who choose and keep choosing the brand, loyalty developed with its collaborators and loyalty to its style. Generally, a Codecasa yacht takes up the lines of the previous one, refining its nuances. This is why the word revolution gives way to evolution. The 200 years in business are also the result of the work and passion of many people. Today Codecasa Shipyards are in every sense a large family that proudly and affectionately carries forward the values traced and instilled by its founders.
