Rome: Tourists are being offered boat tours of the rusted, battered hulk of the disaster liner Costa Concordia, as it undergoes gradual demolition in the Italian port of Genoa.
For €10 (Dh47.6) a head, sightseers can board a boat that takes them within 200 yards of the vessel on an hour-long trip.
Thirty-two people lost their lives when the cruise liner capsized off the island of Giglio in January 2012. The 950ft-long ship was towed away from Giglio in July, after a two-year engineering operation in which it was raised, refloated and removed from its resting place just outside Giglio’s port.
The unprecedented salvage effort, which cost more than €1 billion, involved hundreds of engineers, mariners and divers from more than a dozen countries.
The hour-long tours, which leave Genoa’s old harbour every afternoon, take visitors to the industrial port of Pra-Voltri, on the outskirts of Genoa, where the Concordia is moored.
Residents of Giglio want to keep six massive undersea platforms used to support the cruise ship to create an artificial reef. Italy’s environmental ministry wants to remove the platforms, but Giglio’s town council has voted to keep the huge structures, which sit 90ft below the surface close to the island’s main port. Locals expect the platforms to attract fish, which could in turn bring divers to the island.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2014
