Three months after the last section of the new Genoa bridge was laid, the city is celebrating its inauguration on Monday. The families of the victims, who consider the ceremonies inappropriate, will not participate.
It has been almost two years to the day since the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, a city in northern Italy, collapsed killing 43 people.
The President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella will be the first to officially cross the new bridge by car, a work of famous architect Renzo Piano. The head of government, Giuseppe Conte, will deliver a speech and the Air Force acrobatic patrol will fly over the city at around 16:30 GMT.
The families of the victims, meanwhile, announced that they would meet again ten days later to mark the second anniversary of the tragedy.
"We will not be present at the inauguration, we do not want the tragedy to end in carnival", said Egle Possetti, representative of the Parents' Committee of the victims, who lost his sister, his brother-in-law in this tragedy. and two nephews.
"You can have a big party like this if the bridge was destroyed because it was old, a new one was built and no one died," he added.
Judicial battle
At the time of the accident, the bridge had involved in its fall dozens of vehicles, on the road to vacation or work. Among the 43 victims were four children.
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The drama gave rise to a bitter legal battle, which is still ongoing.
In the dock: many people and companies, such as Autostrade per l'Italia (Aspi), manager of this road viaduct and whose main shareholder is the Benetton family.
An investigation still underway has revealed serious shortcomings in the maintenance of the bridge. It led the Benetton family to withdraw from the Italian highways.
The actual legal process is due to start early next year, said Possetti, representing families of the victims.
Tribute to maritime history
The new bridge named San Giorgio was built from a project by Renzo Piano, the famous Italian architect born in Genoa, who designed the Center Pompidou and the new courthouse in Paris.
White and streamlined, it has the shape of the hull of a boat, a tribute to the maritime history of the city.
"It is a bridge […] which does its work in silence by uniting the two sides of a valley, it is also an urban bridge because the valley is in the city but it is also the son of a tragedy", recently stated Mr. Piano.
Since the last section was laid, safety tests have followed one another to allow its final inauguration.
About ten days ago, 56 trucks weighing 44 tonnes each, for a total of around 2,500 tonnes, tested the strength of the bridge.
