HISTORY
AND ARCHITECTURE
It was decided to
build a Maritime Station on the Ponte Andrea
Doria as soon as
the Ponte dei Mille Maritime Station proved
to be inadequate for the new generation
of great transatlantic liners, which
required due to their size, longer stopovers
and a suitable draught.
Accordingly a plan was drawn up in 1931 by
the Technical Department
of the Independent Consortium of the Genoa
Harbour which was submitted to the judgment
of the architect Luigi Vietti, at that time
Director of the Board for the Preservation
of Monuments.
Although he maintained the general layout
that followed the functional arrangement of
the previous station,
with the quay level reserved for the third
class and the upper floor for first and
second class,
Luigi Vietti (Novara 1903 – Milan 1999), a
young exponent of the M.I.A.R.
(Italian
Movement for Rational Architecture), made
some changes:
he redesigned the main façade replacing the
two large multi-section windows in the wall
facing the entrance
with two large plate glass panes, and he
inserted concrete and glass panels in the
cantilevered roof
to give light to the areas below.
He also simplified the lines on the eastern
side, eliminating the moulding around the
windows,
and finally he placed a large window at the
head of the embarkation passageway and a
spiral staircase,
later destroyed during the war, which
connected the disembarkation deck with the
observation terrace.
Vietti supervised even the smallest details
of the internal layout:
from the door handles to the banisters, and
from the lighting fixtures to the radiators.
Of the furniture designed by the architect,
the curved lamellar walnut armchair is of
particular interest,
being a reinterpretation of a typical Alvar
Aalto curved chair in beech wood.
This model was presented by Vietti, in 1933,
at the 5th Milan Triennale,
the same year in which the recently
completed station was enthusiastically
received in Italy
and abroad by leading architecture magazines.
THE TERMINAL
Thanks to numerous adaptations and
enlargements carried out over the years both
on the infrastructures
and on the quay areas,
today
Ponte Andrea Doria is fitted with a
modern, functional and well-equipped terminal.
The total surface area
of the Cruise Terminal of
Ponte
Andrea Doria is of about 10,000 m2,
with spacious
check-in areas, large customs halls for
baggage collection, dedicated and separate
routes for embarkation
and disembarkation flows and terraces with
mobile walkways for connection with the
ship.
The terminal has adopted the most advanced
solutions in terms of comfort and services
for passengers, as well as
being in line with all the security
regulations.
The two berths, in terms of length and
draught features, can host ships of the
latest generation in complete
safety and handle an overall movement of up
to 10,000 passengers a day.
With the moving of the adjacent Cesare
Imperiale viaduct inland, ample parking
areas have been created
for the coaches and cars being used by
cruise goers.
To facilitate the operativeness of the
latest generation cruise ships, further
extensions are in progress in
the terminal that will
increase the surface useable by passengers.
