It’s quite to difficult to say really when the 50th anniversary of Rome’s Fiumicino airport is.
Originally planned for the 1960 Rome Olympics, the airport didn’t open until five days after the games had actually started (on August 20).
But even then the airport wasn’t fully operative until the January of 1961 when the current Terminal 3 opened for all airline companies to operate from.
Fiumicino looked like this when it first opened: there was a bus and train connection service to Rome’s Termini station, departures and arrivals were on the same level, there was one pharmacy, a news agency, a bank, a bar and a post office.
It had all the essentials in a small space which would soon become Italy’s biggest airport.
The Leonardo da Vinci airport was inaugurated twice, with the first time in 1956 at a small structure that had one run-way and nothing else.
It was a formal ceremony with plenty of political strategem on show to indicate that work had started even though the final plans had not even been approved.
The second inauguration was when it was opened in 1960.
Over the years Rome’s Fiumicino airport has been the scene of two terrorist attacks, once in 1973 when 30 people died, and once in 1985 when 13 people died.
It’s Europe’s sixth airport in terms of passenger numbers and is closely linked to the town of Ostia both logistically and for its architecture.
Two architects on the project also designed Ostia’s beach front buildings and the Kursaal restaurant.
Currently there is an ambitious project underway to expand Rome’s airports with another 1,300 hectares up for development and a new terminal apparently set to measure one million square metres.
A new railway line is planned to connect to Rome’s city centre and the airport itself should have new runways and space for 140 aircraft.
It’s a long way away, but if Rome’s candidature to the 2020 Olympics can push things along, hopefully we’ll see a new airport open – on time.
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