The Chiesa Stella Maris was designed by Michele Busiri Vici in 1968 and is the most architecturally distinguished building on the Costa Smeralda. The brief was to produce something modern that still felt rooted in Mediterranean and Sardinian tradition, and Busiri Vici delivered it with a brilliantly white, organically curved nave that rises above the old port like a stranded shell. From a distance the building reads as sculpture; up close it is all whitewashed concrete and rough granite.
Inside, the church is small and cool, with a single nave and a wooden ceiling. The chief curiosity is a "Mater Dolorosa" painting attributed by some scholars to El Greco, displayed in summer. Sunday Mass in August draws a particular kind of crowd — yacht crews in white polos, summering Romans, the occasional film actor — and remains one of the more agreeable rituals of the Costa Smeralda season.