NEW AIRPORT FOR ROME

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28157, 21 December 1956, Page 9

NEW AIRPORT FOR ROME

Hotels, Cinema And Shops Planned

Rome expects to have one of the world’s biggest and finest airports by the middle of 1960. The modern Italian architectural genius which built Rome’s railway station, generally agreed to be one of the most splendid in the world, is being given free reign in the construction of the airport, which the builders claim will be an ultra-modern giant of concrete, marble and glass able to handle 400 aircraft and 10.000 passengers a day. Covering an area of about 1,790,000 square yards, the airport will include luxury and second-class hotels, cinemas. restaurants, shops, and several nurseries equipped with the most delightful toys. This grand air station, which the builders believe will rival in size, efficiency and architectural beauty any other airport in the world, has been dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci. A statue of this Renaissance artist, genius and pioneer of flight, will stand outside the main entrance.

Hundreds of workmen are already preparing the site for the Leonardo da Vinci air-station, about 6 J miles west of Rome, near the small Tyrrhenian fishing port of Fiumicino. The countryside there is almost flat and was once marshland. Two thousand years ago, the ancient Roman port of Trajan stood there, along a canal between the now Tiber and Tyrrhenian sea, just north of the mouth of the Tiber. The decision to build a new airport was taken because of the ever-increas-ing demands on the present airport, Ciampino, for landing and take-off facilities. Ciampino, third largest airport in Europe after London and Le Bourget and Orly (taken together), can handle an average of 180-190 aircraft and about 2500 passengers a day. With the growth of Rome into one of the great cross-roads of the world’s air routes in the last few years, its airport has become increasingly overburdened. Official statistics show that in 1954. 756.557 pasengers used Ciampino. while the 1955 figure was 921,800. Like many existing big airports all over the world, Ciampino cannot be adequately expanded. The Alban Hills and the spreading suburbs of the Italian capital, which has itself grown phenomenally since World War 11, set a limit on the extension of its boundaries.

The Fiumicino area was chosen as the site for the new airport because there are no natural barriers to evenual expansion and it is linked to Rome by wide, fast highways. The new airport will have three sets of buildings—one block for international traffic, another for part of the national traffic, and a third for the arrival and departure of important personages. All the buildings will be linked by roads and tunnels. Present plans are for two runways: one will be about 9800 feet long, running northwards parallel to the sea, and the other will be 8530 feet long, pointing east