Aurora El Diablo Segreto di Italia Baia Review: A Limited-Edition Fountain Pen with Real Character

Introduction

The Aurora El Diablo Segreto di Italia Baia is another entry in Aurora’s Segreto di Italia series of limited edition fountain pens, each commemorating an interesting city in Italy. This one celebrates Baia, a fashionable holiday resort for the Roman aristocracy, a place with more than its share of hedonism and scandal. Even better: the lower part of town became submerged due to volcanic activity and survives today as a partly submerged archaeological park, which is a genuinely fascinating bit of history to wrap around a pen.

Where the earlier Segreto pen in this series came in a whitish material, the Baia edition arrives in a blue-purple mix that is quite pretty in the resin. It is essentially an Aurora 88 in a fancy limited edition material, limited to 888 pieces. This review covers what is in the box, how it writes, and what you should weigh before buying.

Unboxing and First Impressions

The Baia comes in a large, very shiny presentation box, and Aurora includes a bottle of ink, which is a neat touch. Inside there is a little display card marked with 18K gold nib details alongside the pen itself.

Size-wise, it sits next to a Pilot Metropolitan at about the same length, with a little more girth. The section tapers down and flares out slightly, and it is comfortable to hold both unposted and posted. It is a nice-sized pen overall: not too big, not too small.

Design and Materials

Aurora does cool things with its materials, and this resin is no exception. On top there is a finial in the same material as the rest of the pen, and the clip has a nice shape and sits quite tight. The back of the cap carries the individual numbering; this example is 483 out of 888. The center band reads Aurora on one side and made in Italy on the other.

Down at the barrel you get the piston turning knob, because these are piston-filled pens, plus an ink window, which is always useful on a piston filler. The nib is made in-house by Aurora, in 18K gold.

Nib Options

Aurora offers the Baia in fine, extra fine, medium, and broad 18K gold nibs, plus double broad, oblique medium, oblique broad, stub italic broad, and other variations. Flex nibs, made in-house by Aurora, are available too. Those special nibs add 65 euros extra to the price, which is worth factoring in if you are eyeing something beyond the standard line-up.

Writing Performance

The review unit arrived with a stub nib filled with Waterman blue, and it was a pleasant writer. A stub gives a nice amount of line variation, and the ink flow sits in a comfortable middle ground: not excessively dry, not excessively wet, and it does not run dry. There was one skip here and there, but that seemed to be the writer rather than the nib.

One thing to know going in: Aurora nibs have a bit of feedback by design. If you want a super smooth, glassy writing experience, this is probably not the pen for you. Reverse writing is possible, but with a stub-like nib you get something stubby in reverse too, so it is not the greatest candidate for upside-down writing. As a standard writer, though, it is a really pleasant nib.

Things to Consider Before Buying

The main hurdle is price. The Baia lists at 652 euros 89 cents, without VAT, which overseas buyers do not have to pay. There is also a 10 percent discount available through the banner on the review site’s website, which helps a little, but the reality is simple: this is an expensive pen.

The limited edition run of 888 pieces is limited, but not extremely so, and at the end of the day it is still an Aurora 88 underneath, a model available in many materials on the market, some very plain, some equally extravagant. That means the buying decision comes down mostly to how much you love this particular material and whether the presentation box, ink bottle, and piston filler with an ink window are enough to justify the outlay. For collectors, it is a lot of fun.

Buying Advice

If you already enjoy Aurora’s writing feel and the blue-purple Baia resin speaks to you, this is an easy recommendation: it is a good writer with a lot going for it, from the piston filling system to the wide nib selection. If you are after a perfectly smooth nib or a bargain, look elsewhere, because the feedback-heavy Aurora tuning and the premium price are defining traits here, not flaws you can shop around.

Conclusion

The Aurora El Diablo Segreto di Italia Baia is a pleasant, well-built piston filler with beautiful material, an in-house 18K gold nib, a generous nib range, and a genuinely interesting city story behind it. It is not cheap, and 888 pieces is only so limited, but as a collector’s piece it is a lot of fun, and as a writer it delivers.