Summer People
Every July, without particular enthusiasm on either side, the summer people arrive in Marisòla. They come from the north mostly — pale, purposeful, carrying quantities of sunscreen that suggest profound distrust of the Mediterranean. They book the rooms with sea views. They eat at the trattoria at seven, when the kitchen has only just begun to think about dinner. And within twenty-four hours, someone among them finds the beach.
The beach nobody uses. La Spiaggia dei Pigri, on the old maps — beautiful, sandy, ignored.
They arrive expecting to have discovered something — a romantic view, an old abandoned village, and perhaps, in the back of their minds, the idea that one day they might buy a house here. There are no houses for sale in Marisòla. There have not been, within memory. They are inherited, or they are not, and either way nobody is asking.
You can recognise them by how they walk — slower than necessary, one hand raised against the sun, a hat that nobody in Marisòla would wear. They look at the water. They look at the sand. They take a photograph. Then they spread a towel and sit down, and something begins to trouble them, though they cannot say what.
An old story says the beach is cursed. Nobody has been able to explain this satisfactorily, including Don Pino, who has tried. It is a useful story. It keeps people away, and Marisòla has never seen a reason to correct it.
At some point, one of the summer people asks a local why the beach is empty. The local considers this the way you consider a question that contains a wrong assumption — carefully, briefly, and then not at all. È sempre così, they say, which is accurate but explains nothing. The tourist nods as though something has been clarified.
The only people in Marisòla who genuinely welcome the summer people are Tonino, who keeps the bar, and Rosa, who runs the trattoria. Tonino remembers their names, refills their water without being asked, and does not visibly judge them for ordering cappuccino after noon. Rosa steers them to a table before they have made a decision and fills their glasses before they have formed an opinion. In a town of approximately three thousand people, this warmth is statistically unusual. Both Tonino and Rosa benefit economically from the summer people’s arrival, which may explain it entirely.
The tourists who venture toward the harbour sometimes consider asking Peppè or Calòggero about a boat tour. They have usually been warned by then — there is a rule in Marisòla, unwritten but well understood, about not placing yourself between those two. They do not ask.
The trouble, I think, is that they came expecting the beach to perform. A beautiful place, in their experience, is a place that knows it is beautiful — that has organized itself around being found, offers sunbeds and a bar, reflects their arrival back at them as confirmation of good taste. This beach does none of those things. It is simply there, as it has always been, water arriving and receding with the particular indifference of things that have been doing the same thing for a very long time.
By the afternoon they have usually gone back to the town. The beach resumes whatever it was doing before, which appears to be nothing. Dante, my dog, who has no opinion on the beach’s reputation, goes into the water. The cats — George and Clooney — observe from a distance they consider appropriate. I sit on the same stone I have been sitting on since I was eleven, in the summers I spent at my grandmother’s villa, and watch the sea do what the sea does.
There is a version of this that becomes a lesson — something about how beauty does not require an audience, how the best places are the ones that resist becoming destinations. I am aware of this version and I am choosing not to write it. The beach is not a lesson. It is a beach. It has been here longer than Marisòla and will be here long after the last summer person has found somewhere more accommodating to spend their two weeks.
Maybe they will come back next July. They will find it again. They will sit down, feel the same unnamed unease, and leave before they understand what it was.
The beach will not mind. Neither will I.
Osalio Verbino
Marisòla, summer 2026
Osalio Verbino — Appunti da Marisòla Track 02: The Beach Nobody Uses
Music: AI-generated with Suno Pro 2026