Lido Fleet : Italian Line Passenger Ships & Services

Italia Società per Azioni di Navigazione's ("Italian Line") 45 years of passenger service pales against the century-and-a-half traditions of P&O and Cunard. Yet Italia inherited a venerable and honorable legacy of Italian steam navigation-what Mussolini consolidated in 1932 was built on a hundred-year-old foundation of Italian maritime enterprise and achievement by Raffaele Rubattino, Vincenzo Florio and Antonio Cosulich, through whose vision the Italian tricolor was nailed to the highest mast of passenger shipping. A creation of the Fascist corporate state, Italia was its proudest symbol, yet its greatest triumph came after the devastation of the Second World War when The Renaissance Fleet represented Italy's postwar recovery. And the untimely end of Italia's passenger services in 1977 was the culmination of a troubled transition from crossing to cruising, and from vital services to floating works project.