Velaa Private Island

The island's name gives the game away. Velaa means turtle in Dhivehi, and for generations green turtles came ashore here to lay their eggs on a crescent of sand in Noonu Atoll. The resort that took the name, Velaa Private Island, opened in December 2013 and has kept the turtles' corner of the beach fenced off from guests ever since.

History

Velaa is the project of Jiří Šmejc, a Czech investor who took a long lease on the island and spent several years and a large private fortune on it before opening. He hired Petr Kolář, a Prague architect with no previous resort work, to design the whole thing, and the result is a Maldivian resort with a distinctly central European sense of engineering: a tower, a snow room, a golf course on a coral island. It opened in the winter of 2013 and has stayed in the same hands since, independent of any chain.

Architecture and design

Kolář drew on the shape of the turtle for the main pavilions, whose roofs curve like shells over the restaurants and the arrival jetty. Most of the island is given over to villas spaced widely apart along the beach, with a line of over-water villas on the lagoon side. The landmark is Tavaru, a tower rising above the trees with a wine cellar at its base and a teppanyaki restaurant at the top, the tallest structure on any Maldivian resort island when it was built. Interiors use dark timber, local coral stone and a great deal of glass, with pools in every villa.

Rooms and suites

The villas divide between beach villas and houses set in the trees, over-water villas and residences, and the Romantic Pool Residence, which stands alone in the lagoon and is reached only by boat. Several villas have two or more bedrooms for families, and the largest, the Private Residence, comes with its own stretch of beach, a gym and staff quarters. Every villa has a butler and a pool. The resort publishes a count in the forties for its villas, a figure the facts file does not match.

Dining

Aragu is the fine-dining restaurant, a tasting-menu room over the water that has held its own against anything in the Maldives since opening. Tavaru serves teppanyaki in the tower above a cellar of several thousand bottles, with wine dinners in the cellar itself. Athiri is the beach restaurant for lunch and relaxed dinners, and Avi is the pool bar. The island grows a share of its own vegetables and herbs. Private dinners are laid on the sandbank off the lagoon or in the villas.

Wellness

The spa pavilions stand over the lagoon and include a snow room, where the temperature is kept below freezing and real snow falls from the ceiling, as a cold contrast to the steam room and the Maldivian heat. Treatments use the My Blend by Clarins programme. The fitness side is unusual: a golf academy with a short course designed by José María Olazábal, a tennis court with a resident coach, a climbing wall and a full range of water sports, including a semi-submarine for guests who do not dive.

Weddings and events

Weddings are blessing ceremonies, on the beach, on the sandbank or on the deck of a villa, since the Maldives does not register foreign marriages. Velaa is sized for whole-island buyouts and takes them, with the Private Residence as the hosts' base and dinners in Aragu or the cellar for the group. There are no conference rooms; a boardroom-style table can be set in the library or in one of the residences.

Location

Velaa lies in Noonu Atoll in the north of the Maldives, about 45 minutes by seaplane from Velana International Airport at Malé, or a domestic flight to Maafaru followed by a speedboat. The house reef is close enough to the beach for snorkelling from the sand. For a private-island resort in the Maldives the list of things to do on land is unusually long, which is part of the point of the place.