I porti aerei della laguna

• Main Author: Pietro Lando
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: École Normale Supérieure de Lyon Editions 2014-12-01
• Series: Laboratoire Italien
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/laboratoireitalien/836

Venice had a major role in the origins of the Italian naval airforce not only due to the fact that it had an ancient historic arsenal but also because it had proved to be a major centre of aircraft development and construction. In fact, the island of Sant’Andrea’s aeronautical base, with its flying boats, together with the base in San Nicolò on the island of Lido, with its planes, played an important part in the First World War. This was partly thanks to the presence of French flying machines sent over to defend the lagoon city. After the war, the launch of the international scheduled flight to Vienna, on the 18th of August 1926, from the landing fields of San Nicolò made it officially the first Italian “airport”. Up until the start of the Second World War, it remained the second busiest airfield in Italy, after Rome, in terms of both goods and passenger transit. Meanwhile, on the Lido, aeronautical workshops, under the trade name Officine Areonavali, were set up and after the Second World war these workshops proved to be an important part of the aeronautical industry operating at an international level. In the beginning of the seventies the need for a major airport to accommodate large aircrafts led to the construction of Marco Polo airport on the edge of the Venetian lagoon thus heralding major social and economics changes for the local community.