With the beginning of the year 2025, Codecasa Shipyards celebrate their 200 years of activity, under the same family management, an important goal, which the company is very proud of. The shipwright Giovanni Battista Codecasa founded Codecasa Shipyards in 1825 in the town of Viareggio. He was then succeeded by Giovanni Battista Codecasa, named Tistino, in 1902, who showed a remarkable ability to adapt to the hard times of the Second World War, making it a winning factor for the company. In the 1960s, the years in which Viareggio began to become a point of reference for shipbuilding, the company passed to Tistino, Ugo and Sandro. At the beginning, the Company focused its activity on sail boats, with a production that in the year 1946 counted over 50 units in addition to fishing boats, pontoons, light boats and vessels of all types.
Upon Ugo’s death in 1973, Fulvio Codecasa inherited the company, becoming a key figure for the yard’s subsequent winning strategy, thanks to which it established itself on the international scene. Driven by the desire for diversification, he combines the production of work boats with that of luxury motor yachts.
In 1985 Fulvia, Fulvio’s daughter, joined the family business, followed by her younger sister Elena. Subsequently the family team expanded and included her husbands Ennio Buonomo and Fabio Lofrese. In the 2000s this well-planned path was followed by Fulvia and Ennio’s sons, Matteo and Niccolò, and recently by their daughter Chiara.
Between 1973 and the end of the 1990s, the yard produced very different yachts. Just to name a few: Entrepreneur and Casabella, built to sail in American waters, the 27-metre Fair Play, which represents the first in the history of the shipyard to introduce the Codecasa style. Followed by the 62 meter Luisella, the largest unit built to date, as well as the first to be destined for the charter market. In 1994 the production stands out with Blue Velvet and in 1996 with Charly Coppers, which launched the series of the 48/51 meters and many other successful projects.
The innovative construction of the Codecasa Shipyards is now a success and makes expansion in the area possible, with the start of the CodecasaDue shipyard in 1982, within the old headquarters of the Shipyard in the Darsena Toscana. In 1987 a third hub came to life, the Codecasa Tre Shipyard, located in the Nuova Darsena. In 2011, a further expansion incorporated a fourth centre in the Navicelli area of Pisa, a large building made up of four sheds, more suitable for the construction of large boats.
At the beginning of the 2000s, being able to count on many strengths, Codecasa entered the sector of large aluminum fast open boats and the first owner to believe in it was Fulvio Codecasa himself in 2004. The yacht will be named after his wonderful wife, Maria Carla.
Over the years, Codecasa owners themselves acted as ambassadors for the brand: in Italy Giorgio Armani replaced his Mariù from 2003 with the Main in 2008. Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce built their first Regina d’Italia in 2006, in which was followed by the Regina d’Italia in 2019. Leonardo del Vecchio built two Codecasa (the last one named Moneikos); Paolo Bulgari built Magari in 2011 and Piersilvio Berlusconi built Dragoluna in 2019. The Codecasa portfolio includes clients from all over the world, a result of the excellence and reliability of the shipyard.
Generation after generation, Codecasa writes an important chapter of the global history of shipbuilding and yachting, and if on the one hand there is the weight of many responsibilities, on the other there is the satisfaction in seeing that the choices of the past were right and calibrated, together with so much courage and strong determination. Fulvio Codecasa has long pursued a very specific line that has allowed him to become one of the key players in large-scale pleasure craft and to build an independent family system that overlooks the port of Viareggio like a lighthouse that dominates and illuminates the city.
Codecasa does not qualify as a traditional shipyard, but as a reference of construction quality and unparalleled product recognisability, based on a unique loyalty system, that of the clients who choose and continue to choose the brand, that of the collaborators and that of the brand towards its own style that never betrays. A Codecasa yacht takes up the lines of the previous one, improving its nuances. This is why evolution is preferred to the word revolution.
The 200 years of activity are also the result of the work and passion of many people. The Codecasa Shipyards are today in all respects a large family that carries forward with pride and affection the value traced and imprinted by its founders.