Costa Bella Collection: Marbella: The Costa Bella Collection

Costa Bella Collection Tiles

Half a millennium ago, Spanish adventurers stepped ashore on Florida's mid-Atlantic coast. The Old World met the New World, encountered a beauty hauntingly familiar, named it La Florida, and marked these shores forever. The Costa Bella Collection celebrates the unbroken link between Spain and Florida-in vitality, romance, and style. We are proud to announce this collection of exquisite oceanfront properties, all paradises of modernity in our ageless paradise of sea, sand, and sky.

The design inspiration for the tile of Marbella, beautiful sea, comes from the façade of Casa de las Conchas (House of Shells) in Salamanca. Built in 1490, the house features more than 400 carved scallop shells, which appear throughout Spain as the symbol of St. James and his pilgrims. The disciple James's body was miraculously borne to Santiago for burial; as it passed, a horse and rider plunged headlong into the sea, to emerge alive and covered with shells. Santiago is one of the world's most famous pilgrimages. The House of Shells, owned by a knight of the Order of St. James, is an example of the Isabelline style, combining Gothic, Renaissance, and Mudéjar elements.