Donoratico
Location: Italy (Tuscany)
Village type: Cases
Opening date: 1966
Closing year: 2003
For the record: Located on the Mediterranean coast between Livorno and Piombino and 15 hours from Paris Gare de Lyon by sleeper train, Donoratico opened on July 2, 1966 with Roger CAILLET as village chief.
The village is situated in a 35-hectare forest bordering a long, straight beach like those found in the Landes region or in the North of France.
Designed specifically for families with children, Donoratico was one of the first villages, along with Santa Giulia and Pakostane, to introduce a Mini Club in 1967. Donoratico is even discouraged for singles and couples without children during school holidays, when the village is packed and often overbooked!
For sports, the village offers a ranch with around thirty horses, tennis courts, a proper judo dojo, and sailing. The first tridents also advertise water skiing but point out that the sea conditions make it tricky.
The village also had 2 lovely swimming pools, one with a double diving board.
The village closed in 2003 with Alain Fresson
Today :
About ten years after the Club's closure and after some legal wrangling regarding the sale of the land, a new era has begun for the former Club Med
Paradù Tuscany Eco Resort is a village made up of wooden mobile homes equipped with all modern comforts. Unfortunately, little remains of the old resort except for the amphitheater and a few other odds and ends. The lovely swimming pool with its diving board is gone.
Videos
Club Med Donoratico
Commercial
Excerpt from the Club's promotional film "Whatever your age on the calendar"
Poï Chevalier / Sylvie Lefevre
Club Med Donoratico Summer 1997
🙋♂️..Hello and delighted to see the Village Club again, the place where I spent my 11 years and where I earned all my swimming certificates.
My father, in 1971 I believe,
participated in the filming of a... "WESTERN" movie
actually SPAGHETTI (LOL)
, which we watched one evening
at the Club's headquarters.
What memories! Thank you for allowing us these trips down memory lane.
Sincerely, Ph. Huet
philip.huet@yahoo.fr
Wow, same for me, I must have been 6 or 8 years old, the kids' club, the bead necklaces to buy ice cream, the diving board where I learned to swim, the evenings… Pierre and Marc Jolivet as Club Med entertainers!