The Italian municipality of Arzachena has named Porto Cervo’s central square after the late Aga Khan IV and unveiled a bronze statue in his honor. The ceremony, held on Thursday, July 9, was attended by his son and successor, Prince Rahim al-Hussaini, other members of the family, and senior regional officials.
Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, died in February 2025 and was widely regarded in Sardinia as the founder of modern Costa Smeralda, the upscale coastal area he began developing more than six decades ago. His son succeeded him as the 50th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, according to the Associated Press. Thursday’s ceremony marked his first public appearance in Sardinia since taking on the role, Italian news agency Italpress reported.
According to L’Unione Sarda, the event took place in the heart of the Costa Smeralda resort area. A bronze sculpture showing a young Prince Karim seated on a low wall and gesturing toward the sea was unveiled during the ceremony, accompanied by a musical performance from violinist Anna Tifu. The statue was cast at the Pietrasanta artistic foundry, and Italian media described it as capturing both the prince’s humanity and his forward-looking vision.
Aga Khan V attended with his uncle, Prince Amyn Aga Khan, and his two young sons, Princes Irfan and Sinan.
In remarks delivered partly in Italian, Rahim Aga Khan expressed gratitude for the honour given to his father. “A piazza is a place of meeting, memory and community,” he said, according to Italian outlets and official Ismaili statements. “To associate my father’s name with this one places his memory within Porto Cervo, among the people, the architecture, the landscape and the sea he loved so deeply. My family and I are profoundly grateful for this moving tribute.”
According to La Nuova Sardegna and L’Unione Sarda, Aga Khan V also spoke about his family’s long connection to the region. He said he and his brothers spent childhood summers in Sardinia and that his own children and nephews now form a third generation enjoying the same places his father first discovered as a young man in the early 1960s.
At that time, the Monti di Mola area was largely undeveloped, without roads or electricity. With the late Imam’s guidance, the area grew into the Costa Smeralda through planning that emphasized local materials, low-rise buildings and respect for the natural landscape, an approach Italian media and official accounts have described as one of the Mediterranean’s early models of low-impact tourism development.
Arzachena Mayor Roberto Ragnedda, who spoke with Aga Khan before the formal ceremony, told attendees that the late prince arrived in the area at 20 years old and recognized its potential for a different kind of development. “He had the foresight to understand that local identity and natural heritage could become the foundations of shared development,” Ragnedda said, according to L’Unione Sarda. The mayor announced that Prince Rahim will receive honorary citizenship of Arzachena, the same distinction granted to his father in 1965.
Sardinia’s regional president, Alessandra Todde, who also addressed the ceremony, placed the tribute in broader terms. “Today we are inaugurating a plaza and a sculpture, but above all we are entrusting to the collective memory a name and a vision that have profoundly shaped the history of contemporary Sardinia,” Todde said, according to ANSA and L’Unione Sarda. She credited the late Imam with fostering entrepreneurship, investment and opportunities that benefited generations of islanders.
The tribute follows the renaming earlier this year of Sardinia’s Olbia airport in the late Aga Khan’s honour, Italian news agency Italpress reported. The Costa Smeralda has since grown into a premier destination while maintaining strict architectural guidelines that keep buildings low-rise and integrated with the granite coastline.
In closing remarks, Aga Khan turned to the future. “He would have been deeply moved by this honour,” he said of his father. “I know he would also have wanted this moment to be about the future: caring for this place with the same imagination, discipline and sense of stewardship that inspired its creation.”
