Benetti built AELIA in 2015 and returned her to the yard for a full refit in 2024, and the result reads less like a renovation than a recalibration: this tri-deck yacht now runs at a pace her exterior barely hints at, cruising the Mediterranean and Middle East at a considered 14 knots with a 17-knot top end in reserve. At 56 metres, she sits in a size bracket where owners typically choose between amenity and grace. AELIA does not choose.
The clearest evidence is upstairs. Where most yachts her length carry one owner’s suite, AELIA carries two, both full-beam and both set on the upper deck, a layout usually reserved for vessels ten metres longer. Each opens onto windows that run wall to wall, and each pairs a private seating area with a marble ensuite finished in warm stone and brushed brass. For split families, business partners chartering together, or a couple who simply wants the option, it changes what a week aboard can look like.
Below, six further doubles and two convertible twins carry the same restraint: dark timber joinery, soft neutral upholstery, sconce lighting kept low and warm. A sweeping stone-and-glass staircase connects the decks, its curve doing more to signal the yacht’s ambition than any single room could on its own.
The public spaces favour composure over spectacle. The main salon runs a full deck in warm woods and oversized seating, built for an evening that starts with drinks and drifts into dinner without anyone needing to move far. Forward of it, a formal dining room seats the full complement of twelve beneath chandelier light, with a bar built into the corner for a host who wants to pour rather than ring for service. One deck up, a second lounge trades the salon’s gravity for glass on three sides and a fitted screen, practical for sport, better suited to a film once the sun goes down. AELIA also carries a dedicated cinema room belowdecks, tiered leather seating and a projector screen sized for a proper night in, which on a charter yacht this size is still the exception rather than the rule.
Wellness gets its own footprint rather than a corner of the gym. A steam room and ensuite bathroom sit off the fitness space, and a separate massage room, lit from two sides, gives bodywork its own quiet room rather than a folding table wheeled into a cabin. An elevator serves every deck from the guest quarters to the sun deck, and the layout throughout is wheelchair accessible, a detail still rare enough at this size to be worth stating plainly.
On the water, AELIA carries what her crew describe as the richest toy collection in the Eastern Mediterranean, led by a Pirelli P50 chase tender fast enough to open up an afternoon well beyond the anchorage, alongside a Castoldi jet tender, a Williams SportJet and jet skis for guests who want to make their own wake. A crew of fifteen, several who have worked this yacht together for years, run the operation with the kind of quiet anticipation that only comes from repetition, the sort of service that notices before it is asked.
AELIA charters the West and East Mediterranean through the summer season and repositions to the Middle East, the Red Sea, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the wider Arabian Gulf, for the winter, giving her an unusually long operating calendar for a yacht of her size.
