Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman emperor Claudius used a man-made canal to create an artificial island near the mouth of the Tiber River. It became home to longshoremen and traders and one of the region’s biggest necropolises.
Today, Isola Sacra – the Holy Isle − seems lost in time, especially the beachfront around the old, crumbling lighthouse in the southwest corner.
The area looks and feels like a hippie commune from the 1960s, completely divorced from the hustle and bustle of nearby Rome Fiumicino airport and the capital itself, just 25 kilometres away.
Many of the locals live in houses on stilts, known as bilancioni, whose long booms would dangle fishing nets over the water. They are connected by footpaths along the beach and have served as backdrops for films starring Uma Thurman, Andy Garcia and Charlize Theron. The local coffee shack, Porticciolo il Faro, is made of wood, accepts only cash and faces a marina full of small, bruised pleasure and fishing boats. The people tend to be older, tattooed, casually dressed and friendly.
But they are not relaxed.
That’s because they know their way of life, and the natural beauty of their waterfront, could be obliterated as early as next year, when Royal Caribbean (RC), one of the world’s biggest cruise ship companies, and British partner Icon Infrastructure, a fund that used to be part of Deutsche Bank, hope to start construction of a port for cruise ships bigger than the biggest U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. The project has the full support of the mayors of Rome and Fiumicino, the airport city that includes Isola Sacra.
Fishermen cast off from the rocky shoreline of Isola Sacra. The harbour’s shallow waters and sandy seabed mean larger vessels are often unable to enter the port and must remain at a distance from the coast.
Mr. Miconi, known locally as “Attila,” is one of the leading voices opposing the proposed cruise ship development.
Gianfranco Miconi, whose nickname is “Attila” and who lives in one of the bilancioni, is now essentially on a war footing.
His house and those of his neighbours, along with the marina, the café and much of the rest of the waterfront, face eradication to make way for the new port, the arrival and departure facilities, a breakwater and new roads and parking lots. Millions of tonnes of sand would have to be dredged from shallow sea just offshore to make a canal deep enough to allow RC’s floating cities − its Oasis-class megaships carry more than 5,500 passengers on 18 to 20 decks − to dock.
Mr. Miconi is determined to stay in his home on Isola Sacra, a place he says healed him.
“I’m not leaving this place. I’ll leave here dead,” said Mr. Miconi, 74, a former government worker in Rome. “This isn’t just a house. This is my life. This place healed me. Rome was making me sick. Nobody ever cared about this place. They only come when there is money to make.”
RC and Icon face mounting resistance to the port project, which would reportedly cost €350-million. Protest groups have formed, and legal challenges have been launched. The port project has its crucial environmental permit but lacks other approvals, such as “landscape” authorization, since the port and the enormous ships would fundamentally alter the appearance of the Isola Sacra waterfront and possibly intrude on protected areas, such as archeological sites. It also needs the sign-off of the Italian civil aviation authority, which has to determine whether ships that rise 70 metres or more above the water would interfere with the airport’s landing and takeoff paths.
Neither RC nor Icon responded to several requests for interviews from The Globe and Mail.
The cruise operator and the fund are not the first companies to spot Isola Sacra’s potential as a major port, given its proximity to Rome. The nearest cruise ship terminal and marina for large yachts lie 70 kilometres northwest of Rome, in Civitavecchia, making it hard for day trippers to reach the capital.
In 2010, an Italian developer, Francesco Bellavista Caltagirone, planned to build the Mediterranean’s largest marina, with four large docks, luxury apartments, hotels and a convention centre on the island. The project died in 2013 when he was indicted for tax fraud. In 2022, RC paid the City of Fiumicino €11.4-million to lease the Isola Sacra waterfront concession, which covers about 100 hectares of land and sea, for 90 years. RC later sold 90 per cent of the project to Icon, retaining 10 per cent for itself.
Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri placed the Isola Sacra port plan on the city’s list of “essential interventions” for the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee Year in the hopes of providing sea access to some of the millions of Catholic pilgrims who would come to the year-long spiritual celebration. When he did, many people in tourist-clogged, Airbnb-saturated Rome groaned.
“Rome does not need more tourists − and especially not these kinds of ship tourists,” said Giancarlo Petrelli, a retired mechanical engineer and member of the Isola Sacra protest group Tavoli del Porto (Tables of the Port). “Cruise ship guests visit for the day and spend little money.”
He thinks more than 100 buses would be needed to take all the passengers to and from Isola Sacra and Rome, since there is no metro or train stop nearby. Residents of the island worry the ships and buses will fill the air with diesel fumes.
Donato Gemito, owner and manager of the Isola Sacra harbour, sees the port project as a opportunity for potential economic growth.Fabrizio Troccoli/The Globe and Mail
The mayor of Fiumicino, Mario Baccini, has said the RC-Icon port would transform the city for the better by creating thousands of construction and service jobs at no cost to the municipality. He declined to talk about the project to The Globe. “What do you Canadians care about this Fiumicino issue?” he said.
Some island residents doubt the project will go ahead as planned, given its construction and environmental complexities.
Luigi Gemito, 63, the owner of Porticciolo il Faro, thinks RC and Icon might be put off by the cost of having to dredge the sea bottom constantly to allow ships with at least nine metres of draft to reach the pier. “I don’t believe these ships will ever arrive,” he said.
Renato Barucca, 86, a retired boatbuilder who was born on Isola Sacra, agrees that the waters off the island are too shallow. He took The Globe and its photographer on an offshore tour to prove the point. The water near the proposed docking area was clear, making the bottom clearly visible. “The water is shallow here, maximum four metres,” he said. “I think there will be a development here, but not for huge cruise ships, maybe for private yachts.”
But the real reason he opposes the port project is the threat to Isola Sacra’s simple, quiet, lost-in-time way of life, even if the island’s roads and other infrastructure are in terrible shape and trash is piled up here and there.
“Life is good here,” he said. “My parents lived here. We have everything. Sandy beaches, ancient tombs and mosaics, a marina where we can keep our boats for only €100 a month. We don’t need diesel smog and ship and bus traffic.”
Environmental concerns play a significant role in the debate surrounding the proposed port project. Many locals expressed fears that increased maritime traffic could alter the environmental balance of the area, which is home to numerous bird species and a diverse marine ecosystem.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Isola Sacra area looks like a hippie commune from the 1950s. The correct decade is the 1960s. (June 7, 2025) This article has been updated to correct Gianfranco Miconi’s last name.
