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Regent Seven Seas Cruises Reveals a First Look of Its Newest Ship—See Photos
In late 2026, Regent Seven Seas Cruises is set to raise the all-inclusive luxury bar even higher with the launch of Seven Seas Prestige , its seventh ship and the first of the all-new Prestige-class ships.
Currently in build at Italy's Fincantieri shipyard in Ancona, Italy, Regent has revealed the first glimpse inside the ship, sharing images of two public spaces: Starlight Atrium and Galileo's Bar. One of the many lounges on board the Prestige.
Regent Seven Seas Cruises
Fans of Regent's trademark lavish design won't be disappointed, with touches such as handblown glass and ceramic pearls and light fixtures fashioned to resemble jewelry among the intricate interior details.
Yohandel Ruiz, Founding Partner at Studio DADO, the creative team behind both spaces, described Starlight Atrium as a place where 'the grandeur of Renaissance architecture meets modern luxury." Scenic ocean views visible from the panoramic floor to celling windows.
Regent Seven Seas Cruises
'Our goal was to get people to stop in their tracks, awe-struck by its sheer scale and magnificence,' Ruiz said in a statement shared with T+L.
Twin spiral staircases and a glass-enclosed ceiling are feature highlights in the two-story atrium, which impresses with its palette of brushed taupes, soft creams, and royal blues. Pleated leather panelling and embellished trims 'recall an era of quality craftsmanship and style,' Regent said. One of the bars that will be on board.
Regent Seven Seas Cruises
Accessible from Star Atrium, Galileo's Bar is named to honor Galileo's Lounge, the beloved lounge area on Seven Seas Navigator , a ship set to leave the Regent fleet in 2026. Limestone-clad walls, a contemporary canvas styled like an oil painting on the ceiling and a striking, striped floor create a glamorous setting for guests to mingle and sip Champagne.
Seven Seas Prestige is Regent's first new ship class in a decade and will accommodate 822 passengers in one of the highest passenger-to-space ratios on the sea. The second ship in the class is expected to set sail in 2029.
'Hosting only 822 guests on a ship that could fit hundreds more means we will offer Heartfelt Hospitality in Unrivaled Space at Sea like never before,' Jason Montague, the chief luxury officer for Regent Seven Seas Cruises, said in the statement.
As Seven Seas Prestige approaches its completion date, Regent is promising more reveals to follow, including all-new accommodation categories, a reimagined Regent Suite, and dining experiences.
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Travel Weekly
13 hours ago
- Travel Weekly
How Regent's Seven Seas Grandeur stacks up
Richard Turen I've recently returned from a 12-day British Isles cruise out of Southampton on the Seven Seas Grandeur, the newest Explorer-class ship in the Regent Seven Seas Cruises fleet. I looked for the Picasso print in a public restroom, and I stood transfixed by the most stylish main dining room on any ship I have ever sailed, a space that features lovely contoured arches and degrees of dining separation that should earn at least one of the architectural firms that worked on this project some sort of industry award. The design features carried over into public spaces and the specialty restaurants to a degree that it might be a good idea for other ship designers to sail the Grandeur before taking pen to paper or fingers to AI design kits. Related story: The little things add up on Regent's Seven Seas Grandeur But this is reading like a PR piece, and that is not what I do. This was our family's second Signature vacation of the year, and we were accompanied by 28 extremely well-traveled clients, many of whom have achieved our Cruise Ship Inspector status. That means they have been trained and are qualified to review all aspects of a ship's operations. They complete the same forms that Angela and I use to take notes so that no aspect of a ship's services is overlooked. I had some excellent research from this group, which, in general, matched my opinions of what we had experienced. Let me summarize just a few of my opinions about our experience aboard Regent's newest ship: • Regent remains among the top five or six cruise lines in the world. Its uniqueness is centered on numerous inclusions like shore excursions and an absence of specialty dining surcharges. • Many of your clients will prefer Regent to the competition simply because their dress rules cater to an American audience. There are no formal nights on any cruise of less than 16 nights. Often, the sale is completed when this fact is mentioned. I laugh when I think about formal nights on Alaska cruises. How many of the wilderness houses one sees along the Inside Passage are owned by people who have a suit hanging in the closet? In a way, Regent just "gets it" in ways many of their competitors do not. They score No. 1 in the They Get It category. • I have mentioned to a number of cruise executives that any rankings I am associated with will never grant five-star status to any line that does not address onboard guests by name. That is a great point of differentiation and one of the reasons I have not previously felt that Regent was a five-star product. That has now changed. Staff is using iPads to write down guest requests, and they are being recorded for future use. • There were many pluses and minuses in the cuisine category. Pacific Rim may be the finest Asian restaurant at sea. Don't leave this surprise hit without sampling the duck rolls and the lobster tempura. But the contemporary French eatery Chartreuse was an ongoing disappointment. I don't quite understand why escargot is served as a kind of colorful fried meatball. My haddock was a hamburger-shaped piece of fried fish atop a small plateau of olives, looking to escape. • Services on the open decks and in several lounges were largely impersonal, with staff often unable to engage in conversation. This was not the case in the restaurants. All in all, the Regent experience was a major plus for our guests. When you are seeking to be the casual, high-end contemporary option competing with more formalized stalwarts, you play the game with some distinct consumer advantages. Next column, some port talk.
National Geographic
a day ago
- National Geographic
The rebellious French island of Corsica has been shaped by time and tradition
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). There's something contrarian about Corsica, the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Seen from above, it resembles a hand with its index finger raised in defiance — the digit in question being the Cap Corse, a rugged peninsula of dark green mountains, bobbing fishing boats and beaches like Plage de Barcaggio, untouched by human development and famed for its herd of sunbathing cows. Corsica's story is one of fierce resistance in the face of repeated attacks and colonisation, and the longer you spend on the island the more the headstrong spirit of the Corsican people reveals itself — and the more its apparent paradoxes seem to unfold. 'Corsica, for most of its history, was an island that was afraid of the sea,' says guide Catherine Lehmann as we navigate the coastal capital, Ajaccio, through honeyed stone streets and squares where old men play pétanque in the shade of plane trees. 'Pirates, invasions and malaria — that's what the coast traditionally meant to Corsicans. In 1769, when Napoleon was born here, Ajaccio was nothing.' Napoleon reflected on the obdurate spirit of his homeland: 'Even today, children are raised like warriors here.' Photograph by Jonathan Stokes We walk from the city's coral-hued Renaissance cathedral up a leafy hillside boulevard to an imperious statue of Corsica's most famous son, Napoleon Bonaparte, gazing out over Ajaccio to the sapphire-blue Mediterranean Sea. The statue projects the same image as countless paintings and films have over the past 250 years: a stout man in riding boots and an overcoat, one hand tucked inside his waistcoat, steely eyes staring from beneath a bicorn hat. 'He looked very Corsican. Short, slumped shoulders, but very intense and self-confident,' says Catherine. A Corsican herself, she shares some of his features — she's small but resolute, her olive skin offset by grey-blue eyes, which are surprisingly common on Corsica. In personality, too, Catherine says, Napoleon reflected the obdurate spirit of his homeland. 'Even today, children are raised like warriors here,' she remarks. 'In France, if a kid gets bullied at school, their parents tell them to tell the teacher. Here, we tell them to punch the bully back. Be a Corsican. Not a chicken.' Corsica's strategic position between France and Italy has long made it a target for occupying outsiders, from the Romans, Greeks and Carthaginians of the ancient world to the modern governors — or colonisers, as many Corsicans still see them: the French. So while it's fitting in a way that Corsica's most famous son should be a militaristic outsider like Napoleon, reception to him in Corsica itself is mixed. Not only is he the embodiment of French imperialism, but as ruler of France, he's widely believed to have neglected his Corsican homeland. The view, however, is different in Ajaccio, which he transformed from a coastal backwater into a capital city. 'Here we have a much more positive view of Napoleon than elsewhere in Corsica,' says Catherine as we stroll along the harbour, its swaying palms and gleaming yachts like a vision of the Côte d'Azur. 'And we feel more French.' Into the mountains To discover the Corsican spirit in its most distilled form, I'm heading inland, where medieval hilltop villages rest in blankets of cloud, and hairpin roads wind through mutated outcrops of granite that erupt like popped corn from swathes of cool, thick forest. As I drive, the fragrance of the maquis — the herby shrubland that defines the Corsican interior — floods in through my open window. The aroma of rosemary, sage and the curry-like smell of immortelle, a yellow flower used in some of the world's most expensive fragrances, mingle together in a glorious melange. Corsica is a perfumed isle; a wistful Napoleon, during his final exile on the remote Atlantic island of Saint Helena, is said to have spoken longingly of the scent of his homeland. The aroma of rosemary, sage and the curry-like smell of immortelle mingle together in a glorious melange. Photograph by Jonathan Stokes The serenity is shattered periodically: by death-wish drivers overtaking me on blind corners and, more subtly, by damage to the road signs — in the form of spray paint or bullet holes — erasing the French translations of the Corsican-language place names. The pointed vandalism serves as evidence of abiding discontent with the status quo. Corsica's political climate remains fraught. Although calls for outright independence from France are no longer mainstream, the movement for greater autonomy remains strong and occasionally spills over into violent protest, most recently in 2022. An hour-and-a-half's drive from Ajaccio, the town of Corte reveals itself: a picture-book huddle of medieval houses set on a hilltop citadel that rises imposingly above the maquis. Corte was the capital of the short-lived Corsican Republic — declared an independent state in 1755 by Pasquale Paoli, who sought to liberate Corsica from its ruler at the time, the Republic of Genoa. The Corsican Republic fell when the island was taken over by France in 1769 — the year of Napoleon's birth — but to this day it's Paoli, far more than Napoleon, who's Corsica's national hero. Besides his fierce battle for Corsican independence, Paoli was a liberaliser and innovator; his Corsican Constitution was the world's first written constitution, and incorporated democratic principles including female suffrage. I sit at a cafe in the town square and order a clementine juice — a Corsican speciality — in the shadow of a defiant statue of Jean-Pierre Gaffori, a hero of Paoli's revolutionary movement, who was assassinated in 1750. The building behind him, his former home, is still riddled with bullet holes; above his head, the Corsican flag flaps in the breeze. Like neighbouring Sardinia's, the flag depicts a Moor's head, a legacy of Corsica's time as a territory of the Spanish kings of Aragon. On pre-revolutionary flags the Moor was blindfolded; legend has it that Paoli ordered the bandana to be lifted onto his forehead to symbolise the awakening of the Corsican people. Corsica's political climate remains fraught. Although calls for outright independence are no longer mainstream, the movement for greater autonomy remains strong. Photograph by Jonathan Stokes After another 90-minute drive, I reach my final destination for the day: the home (and holiday cottages) of musician Christian Andreani, in the village of Patrimonio. In the garden, in the shade of an age-thickened chestnut tree, Christian — a short, white-bearded man in glasses and a denim jacket — lays out a selection of ancient Corsican instruments. There are several extravagantly curved sheep horns, an array of wooden recorders and a flute made from a goat's leg bone. This latter instrument, Christian says, is similar to ones used by Corsica's mysterious prehistoric people, about whom little is known beyond the stone menhirs, or standing stones, they left behind. They bear millennia-old carvings of human figures that stand, open-mouthed, frozen as if awestruck by some higher power. Thousands of these figures still scatter the maquis; some stand proud in lonely groves, looking like they were carved yesterday; others lie face-down, cracked and strangled with ivy, waiting to be resurrected. Christian can often be found playing his instruments alone in the mountains, his only accompaniment the burbling of a stream and the tinkle of mule bells. 'It's a rapport with the land and with the cosmos,' he says, before picking up a huge conch shell and brandishing it with a raised fist. 'But this,' he says, 'is the sound of revolution.' He blows a bellowing note that sends birds scattering from the branches and threatens to rain a harvest of chestnuts down on our heads. 'Pasquale Paoli and his troops would blow these shells as a battle cry and to communicate across different valleys,' he says. Although Christian's instruments hark back to a time out of mind, the tunes he plays on them are Corsican folk songs, a genre that's undergone a renaissance in the past 50 years or so. 'We call it the Riacquistu — the reacquisition,' he says. From the 1970s onwards, Christian explains, the Corsican nationalism movement empowered islanders to rediscover the country's unique cultural elements: its Italianate language, long suppressed by the French authorities; winemaking; and folk music. Echoes of the Riacquistu are everywhere here. That very morning, I'd come down for breakfast in my gîte to find the proprietor playing a YouTube video entitled 'One hour of Corsican rebel/combat folk music', humming along between sips of his cafe au lait. These days, not everybody agrees with the methods of the more militant Corsican rebels, but many of these characters have nonetheless gained a place in the collective consciousness as folk heroes. For Christian, though, Corsican national pride doesn't disturb the harmony of present-day Patrimonio. 'This is a peaceful place now,' he says, before leaning in and adding with a conspiratorial whisper, 'there's even a Frenchman in the village.' Christian lays out a selection of ancient Corsican instruments. There are several extravagantly curved sheep horns, wooden recorders and a flute made from a goat's leg bone. Photograph by Jonathan Stokes Christian soon has a chance to showcase Patrimonio's community spirit. There's a musical performance taking place tonight at the San Martinu Church in the village, an imposing structure that looks, with its pockmarked walls and rugged stonework, almost as old as the prehistoric monoliths strewn across the Corsican hinterland. The church is dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours, a fourth-century Roman soldier-turned-monk whose travels inspired the new island-wide Saint Martin Pilgrimage Trail, a walking route that's been opening in stages since 2024. I enter the church as it's getting dark. Christian and a dozen or so other men take to the stage, dressed in grey cassocks, and deliver a rousing set of hymns, their voices coalescing in deep, rich harmony. After the performance, I get chatting to the person next to me on the pew: a smiling, grey-bearded man named Ange Torre. He's a musician, he tells me, and fronts the band Eppò, which combines rock with traditional Corsican folk music. He gives me a blast of one of their songs through his phone. It's a riotous blend of acoustic guitars, bass, drums and the polyphonic singing traditional to the Corsican countryside, all delivered passionately in the Corsican language. Ange acknowledges the influence and importance of the Riacquistu, but says his band initially faced opposition from some purists within the movement. 'A lot of people asked how we could mix traditional Corsican music with rock — they thought we were crazy,' he says. He's also on a mission to upend the atmosphere of the nationalist movement itself, and restore some joy to Corsican music. 'A lot of the music right now is sad or angry about the fight for independence, the injustice, the people that were killed or put in prison,' Ange explains. 'But many of us just want to dance. Nowadays that can seem quite radical — but people need joy.' The evil eye & the white witch The following morning, I take a walk on a forest trail outside Patrimonio through stands of chestnut and pine trees. While showing me around his garden the previous day, Christian had told me that he viewed its most ancient trees as totems. This idea of the totemic power of nature abides in rural Corsica, alongside a deeply rooted belief in a spirit world that exists with and influences our own, unseen to most, but not all. I'd read and heard whisperings about white witches, called signadoras, expert herbalists who purport to have the power to neutralise the evil eye, traditionally feared in Corsica and in cultures across the Mediterranean. I never expected to meet a signadora, but Christian tells me he knows one: a woman called Francesca Desideri. I drive back through the maquis to meet her in the village of Querciolo. The idea of the totemic power of nature abides in rural Corsica, alongside a rooted belief in a spirit world that exists with our own. Photograph by Jonathan Stokes Francesca greets me in her garden, outside a log cabin that serves as her kitchen and workspace. She's elderly, white-haired and has a deeply lined face, but is still sturdy and strong from a life outdoors, picking plants in the maquis. Her eyes are electric blue, bejewelling her eye sockets like semi-precious stones. We take a seat in the workshop, which appears untouched by the passing of centuries. Scythes and bundles of dried herbs hang on the wall, and a black-and-white cat peers nervously around an ancient-looking stove. On the table is a ceramic bowl full of water and a stoppered bottle of olive oil. Francesca motions for me to place my hand on one side of the bowl, then drips three drops of oil into the water, muttering incantations as she does so. These secret prayers, she tells me later, invoke the Virgin Mary — a Christian element absorbed into a pagan tradition to avoid having it stamped out by the Church. 'Christianity came to Corsica very late,' Francesca says. She repeats the oil-and-water process three times, and says that with each repetition, the behaviour of the oil changes, no longer scattering but joining together as one blob — a sure sign that any trace of the evil eye has been cast out. I can't tell much difference, but Francesca seems satisfied. Not all of Corsica's mystical inhabitants are a benign as the signadoras. Francesca tells me that most Corsican villages are home to people known as mazzere, who claim to enter the spiritual plane in their sleep and all have the same dream: that they're hunting in the maquis, where they kill a wild boar. They then turn over the animal's dead body to see the face of someone in the village, who'll be the next person to die in the waking world. These dream-hunters, Francesca says, are bestowed with their powers against their will, and are feared and ostracised in their villages as prophets of death. 'So although I know some,' she says, sharply, 'they won't want to talk to you.' Heroes & villains The final stop on my journey is Bonifacio. The town is split between a somnolent harbour, where little fishing skiffs bob next to expensive pleasure boats, and a grand hilltop citadel. From here, there are sweeping views over the glittering Strait of Bonifacio and the coast of Sardinia, just 10 miles to the south. On both levels, the buildings are handsome, centuries old and hewn from amber stone. The Corsican nationalism movement empowered islanders to rediscover the country's unique cultural elements: its language, winemaking, and folk music. Photograph by Jonathan Stokes 'In the past, the French government made Corsicans believe that they had to move to France to become successful. Recent generations have been empowered to stay and become successful here." Photograph by Jonathan Stokes As it happens, my visit coincides with De Renava contemporary art biennale, which is held in Bonifacio and runs from May to November. The event is hosted in spaces across town, but primarily in a vast, crumbling 19th-century building in the heart of the citadel that was formerly an army barracks. I pull up outside and am greeted by De Renava's co-founder, Dumè Marcellesi. He's a colourful character: a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early 30s, with wild curly hair and a moustache. He shows me around the gallery and I'm a little surprised, in a trendy Corsican contemporary art space, to find the opening room dominated by a huge oil painting of Napoleon Bonaparte, dressed in his coronation furs. It soon becomes clear, though, that this is a subversive statement. 'To some people he's still a hero; here on Corsica he's a villain,' says Dumè. 'The theme of the biennale is 'The Fall of Empires'. You English are specialists in the subject, of course,' he adds with a grin. Dumè signals to a tawdry souvenir vase, emblazoned with Napoleon's image, which sits on a plinth beside the painting. 'This is the modern legacy of Napoleon: cheap tat and tourist marketing,' he remarks. In a previous life, Dumè tells me, he was an investment banker in Paris and a professional rugby player for Stade Français. But during the pandemic he gave up the city life and moved back to the countryside near Bonifacio to take over his parents' farm, producing olives and cheese and becoming a mogul of Corsica's contemporary art scene. 'In the past, the French government made Corsicans believe that they had to move to France to become successful,' he says. 'But since the Riacquistu, that's all changed. Recent generations of Corsicans have been empowered to stay, or come back and become successful here. Corsica is no longer a cage.' In spite of which, he adds, in typically iconoclastic Corsican fashion, 'The Riacquistu is dead. It was a reaction — what we need now is some action.' Dumè's worry, he says, is that the movement to reposition Corsica's role within France plays down the island's merits. 'We need to stop defining ourselves by the past, be happy with what we are and focus on what we can do ourselves.' Dumè's aim with De Renava, he says, is to prove that Corsican artists can stand up alongside better-known international names. Between sketches by Jean-Michel Basquiat and a film by acclaimed Egyptian artist Youssef Nabil is an installation by Corsican artist Yan Leandri: an array of flickering TVs play footage from the 1980s and '90s, when nationalist violence was at its peak. On a wall outside, unrelated to the exhibition, is a stencil of Yvan Colonna, a Corsican nationalist who repeatedly maintained his innocence after being controversially jailed for the 1998 murder of Corsica's highest-ranking official, Claude Érignac. Colonna was himself murdered in jail by a fellow inmate in 2022 and has since become a symbol of the modern nationalist movement. Stencils like this can be seen sprayed on walls across the island. 'The villain became a hero,' Dumè says. 'And so the cycle goes on.' Getting there and around: British Airways flies direct from Heathrow to Figari three times a week in summer. Average flight time: 2h From the French mainland, Air Corsica offers year-round flights from Paris, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse and Lyon to the Corsican airports of Ajaccio, Calvi, Bastia and Figari. Public transport is limited in Corsica. There's one train line, the U Trinichellu, which runs from Ajaccio to Bastia, stopping at Corte. There's also a limited bus service between large towns. Most visitors will find it easiest to rent a car; offices including Avis and Enterprise are represented at the island's airports. When to go The shoulder seasons of spring and autumn (March to May and September to November) are fantastic times to visit Corsica, without the heavy crowds and searing heat of summer. Temperatures often exceed 30C in August, for example, as opposed to average highs of 22C in October. Where to stay: Hôtel Spunta di Mare, Ajaccio. From €75 (£64), B&B. Roc Seven Casa Santini, Porto-Vecchio. From €225 (£188), B&B. More info: DK Top 10 Corsica. £8.99 How to do it: Exodus Adventure Travels has an eight-night Mountains & Villages itinerary in Corsica, covering stops in Ajaccio, Corte and Bastia and visits to prehistoric menhirs, museums and beaches. From £1,349 per person, including transfers, train travel, all meals and guided hikes. Excludes flights. This trip was supported by ATC Corsica, Air Corsica and Atout France. Published in the July/August 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK). To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
Cosmopolitan
2 days ago
- Cosmopolitan
Beyoncé Debuts a Golden Horse Prop on ‘Cowboy Carter' Tour
As Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter Tour continues hitting stadiums across the U.S. this summer, the 35-time Grammy winner is still surprising fans with newness. During her first of four sold-out shows in Atlanta on July 10, Bey performed her western-inspired ballad, '16 Carriages,' on a golden mechanical horse that floated over the crowd so she could get up close and personal with fans. Once members of the BeyHive caught clips of her performance on social media, they pointed out that it was a new addition to her instantly iconic stadium tour. 'The horse was chewing on the car wires bc it wanted to be let out!!! I get it!' one fan jokingly wrote, while another added, 'One thing this lady will never do is stay out the damn sky.' Others even likened the metallic horse to the one featured on the singer's Renaissance album cover, who is jokingly referred to as 'Reneigh' across the fan base. 'IS THIS RENEIGH? WHAT IS HER NAME, Y'ALL!?' someone commented under Beyoncé's Instagram post. In case you somehow missed Bey's concert videos on your social feeds, the show originally featured a floating vintage car during the segment. The 'Break My Soul' hitmaker swapped the original prop for a mechanical horse after the vehicle had tipped over during her hometown show in Houston on June 29. She instructed the stadium's technicians to cut the music as she repeatedly said 'Stop' during the performance. According to fan-captured footage, she was then safely lowered from the air after the frightening mishap. Her team issued a statement on the matter the same night, writing, 'Tonight in Houston, at NRG Stadium, a technical mishap caused the flying car, a prop Beyoncé uses to circle the stadium, and see her fans up close, to tilt. She was quickly lowered, and no one was injured. The show continued without incident.' Because of the accident, Beyoncé cut '16 Carriages' from the setlist during her shows in Washington, D.C. Her performance in Atlanta marks the first time the track was performed since #CowboyCarGate in Houston. Hopefully, her horse safely glides her across future stadiums without fault.
