A shipyard founded in 1854 under Napoleon III has just delivered, in La Spezia, the largest yacht in its 172-year history. Baglietto’s decision to cross the 60-metre threshold with the T60 at this precise moment says less about a mere record than about the question now running through the whole of traditional yachting: how to grow without losing oneself.
Hull number 10260, designed by Francesco Paszkowski, with interiors created together with Margherita Casprini, is no isolated flourish. It is the first in a series of three 60-metre vessels already sold, whose deliveries will be spread over two years—a full order book that confirms, more convincingly than any statement, that the market is following Baglietto onto this new ground for the Italian house. The shipyard has also committed around €25 million in investment by 2030 to expand its production capacity, to the point of considering vessels of 75 metres.
This shift towards the very large yacht is not without consequence for a house whose identity was built on more intimate vessels, from 35 to 65 metres, and on craftsmanship asserted even in the name of its workshops. The T60’s wager is precisely to transpose the sensibility of a family shipyard to an unprecedented industrial scale, without allowing one to dissolve the other. It can be read in the yacht’s aesthetic stance: a hull Baglietto wants to appear “visually lighter”, almost suspended, and a continuous strip of black glass incorporating the portholes—choices intended to lighten through design what gigantism imposes in volume.
The interior layout takes this logic further still by dissolving the boundary between inside and out: the fully glazed, adaptable main saloon and upper deck flow into a single living space facing the sea, extended by a 60-square-metre beach club with a pool, gym and bar. The upper deck, meanwhile, is entirely devoted to the owner—a private office, dressing room and forward counter-current pool—a reminder that, at Baglietto, gigantism serves above all to preserve intimacy rather than merely display square metres.
Diego Michele Deprati, the shipyard’s chief executive, is under no illusion when he describes a “strategic objective pursued with determination” rather than a simple technical feat. For this is indeed a matter of strategy: in a large-yacht market dominated by a handful of Dutch and German names, Baglietto is playing an Italian card—that of a family heritage able to claim, at 60 metres, the same exacting approach to design as at 35.
The T60 will make its world premiere at the Monaco Yacht Show, from 23 to 26 September. There it will face an audience quick to judge whether this grand industrial gesture has—or has not—preserved what made the small La Spezia shipyard distinctive.
Cette publication est également disponible en :
