Riva 130' Bellissima: The Pinnacle of Italian Superyacht Design
Photo Credit: Riva
Picture this: you are anchored off Portofino in late July, the Ligurian light turning the water an impossible shade of copper. Your guests are settling into the cockpit's outdoor dining area — ten people, no crowding — while the crew preps dinner below. The stern beach club is still damp from the afternoon swim. The Bellissima's 40-meter profile draws a slow trail of admiring glances from every tender that passes. No one needs to ask who built her. The mahogany-tinted hull windows, the counter-curved windshield, the signature Riva stance — she announces herself without a word.
That is the life this yacht is built for. Not the spreadsheet version of superyacht ownership, but the version where the boat disappears and the experience takes over. The Riva 130' Bellissima — the flagship of Riva's flybridge range — is designed to make that version feel effortless.
Launched in 2022 at Riva's La Spezia yard and delivered first to an American owner, the 130' Bellissima is the largest production flybridge Riva has ever built. Every design decision — from the placement of the master suite to the 60-square-metre stern terrace — reflects 180 years of institutional knowledge about what serious yachtsmen actually want.
Who It's For
The Bellissima is built for an owner who has been to the water before. You are likely in your 40s or 50s, you have owned at least one or two previous boats, and you are past the phase of being impressed by sheer size alone. What you want now is refinement: a yacht that performs with conviction, absorbs charter seasons or blue-water passages with equal composure, and whose resale story is as strong five years from now as it is today.
You are probably based in the United States, Northern Europe, or the Middle East, with a Mediterranean summer program and Caribbean winters in mind. You value the Riva name not as a brand exercise but as a genuine signal of build quality, designer pedigree, and cultural cachet. When the Ferretti Group CEO Alberto Galassi calls the Bellissima "a tailor-made miracle," it is the language of a builder confident in its product — and the market has agreed. According to YachtBuyer's Market Watch, the few examples that have appeared on the secondary market have averaged just 226 days to sell, with asking prices shifting less than 0.3% from initial list — exceptional stability in any size segment.
This is a yacht for the buyer who understands that the right boat at the right price retains its value precisely because demand never softens.
Design & Layout
Mauro Micheli of Officina Italiana Design — the studio that has designed every Riva since 1994 — had a clear brief for the Bellissima: three full decks, a broad beam, and zero concessions to the visual language that makes a Riva unmistakable. He delivered all three.
The exterior reads as a single flowing form. Carbon fibre, steel, and glass combine on a silvery hull interrupted by a continuous black graphic line that rises toward the deck. The windshield is built with spherical crystals and Riva's signature counter-curvature, a detail that links this 40-meter flagship directly to the brand's mahogany runabouts of the 1960s. The profile stays under 300 GT, a practical consideration for Mediterranean marina access that Micheli worked into the design without sacrificing presence.
The stern is the Bellissima's social anchor. Riva has reconfigured it into two distinct zones — a generous beach club at water level and a main-deck cockpit — together spanning more than 60 square metres of liveable outdoor space. A tender, jet ski, and Seabob are stored discreetly in the port hull side, keeping the beach club uncluttered. On the upper deck, an aft dining area seats ten under the open sky. The foredeck adds a third outdoor zone for those who want views without the social.
Inside, natural light is the dominant material. The main saloon offers an unobstructed 270-degree panorama through floor-to-ceiling glazing, with ceilings clearing 2 metres throughout. Polished rosewood grounds the space in classic Riva warmth, balanced by delicate glass detailing — a composition that reads as penthouse-level rather than nautical.
Accommodation runs to five staterooms for ten guests: the master suite occupies the main deck with its own private lobby and sea-view windows; four en-suite cabins sit on the lower deck, easily accessed through a wide central lobby that prevents the cramped corridor feel common in this size range. The crew of seven have four dedicated cabins aft, with their own heads and separate access — so guest and crew circulation never intersect.
Awards: the design team's work has not gone unnoticed. The Bellissima won Outstanding Exterior Motor Yacht Design (40m–59.9m) at the Boat International Design & Innovation Awards 2024 and was recognized at The World Superyacht Awards 2024 in the Semi-Displacement or Planing Motor Yachts category of 40 metres and above.
Performance
The Bellissima is not a distance cruiser built for slow passages. She is a proper performance yacht that earns her speed figures honestly.
Twin MTU 16V 2000 M96L engines deliver 2,638 hp each at 2,450 rpm, driving a GRP semi-displacement hull shaped by the Ferretti Group Engineering Department. Top speed is 22.5 knots. Cruising speed sits at 20 knots — meaningfully above the 18-knot average for comparably sized motor yachts according to Boat International's superyacht directory. At an economical 11 knots, range stretches to 1,000 nautical miles, giving you the flexibility to run Palma to Valletta or Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas without a fuel stop.
The numbers that matter for day-to-day use: fuel capacity is 17,000 litres (approximately 4,491 U.S. gallons), and freshwater tankage is 3,500 litres. At cruising speed, the yacht carries roughly 360 nm of range — more than enough for the typical island-hopping week in the Aegean or the Italian lakes.
Seakeeping is aided by stabilizers that reduce roll both at anchor and underway, a feature that transforms a 40-meter boat from something your guests tolerate in a swell to something they actively enjoy. The hull is CE certified Class A for open-ocean navigation. At 131 feet 3 inches LOA with a 7-foot 6-inch draft and a 25-foot 9-inch beam, she carries 350 gross tonnes while remaining proportionally slim — the ratio that gives Riva its silhouette advantages over volume-maximized competitors.
Ownership
A new Riva 130' Bellissima enters the market in the $19–25 million range, depending on configuration and delivery year. A 2025 example, Tasty Waves, is listed through Denison Yacht Sales at $24,950,000. That figure places her firmly in the lower tier of the 40-meter superyacht segment — a segment that routinely clears $30–40 million for comparable European production yachts. What you are buying for that difference is Riva's unmatched brand equity and a residual value story that simply does not exist at comparable price points elsewhere.
Annual running costs — crew, fuel, insurance, berthing, maintenance — typically run 10–15% of acquisition value, or roughly $2–3.5 million per year. Owners who build a structured charter program can offset a significant portion of that. The Bellissima's ten-guest accommodation, award-winning exterior, and Riva pedigree make her a strong charter asset in the Western Mediterranean and Caribbean, where Italian-built flagships command premium weekly rates.
The builder behind her matters. Riva was founded in 1842 in Sarnico on Lake Iseo — making it one of the oldest continually operating yacht builders in the world. Part of Ferretti Group since 2000, Riva now operates across three Italian shipyards, with 76–130-foot models built at the La Spezia facility where the Bellissima was launched. Ferretti Group's engineering department — which has developed the naval architecture for more than 700 superyachts in the Boat International database — backs every hull that leaves the yard. This is not a boutique build. It is an industrial-scale commitment to Italian craftsmanship, with a warranty and after-sales network that covers you from Monaco to Miami.
Ten units of the 130' Bellissima have been built to date. Limited production, rapid market turnover, and price stability make the case for ownership as clearly as any specification sheet.
The Decision
The Riva 130' Bellissima is the product of 180 years of Italian boatbuilding translated into 40 meters of contemporary superyacht. She performs above her class, lives above her price point, and carries a brand name that opens harbors and commands respect in ways that no specification sheet can fully capture.
If you are ready to move at this level, the numbers support it and so does the story.
Explore full specifications at YachtSpecsDirect.com
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