- GUGLIELMO MARCONI



Guglielmo Marconi at sea.jpg



​In our new book Great Mediterranean Passenger Liners, two of the "stars" that appear are the Italian sisters Guglielmo Marconi & Galileo Galilei. They were big, fast and beautiful.


The Sixties was another golden age for Italian ocean liners, an age that gave us the Leonardo da Vinci (1960), the aforementioned Marconi & Galilei (1963), Michelangelo & Raffaello (1965), Oceanic (also 1965) and the Eugenio "C" (1966). All splendid ships.


Owned by Lloyd Triestino, these two liners were different. The 27,900-ton, 1,700-passenger Marconi & Galileo were created purposely for the Italy-Australia run (Genoa, Naples & Messina, then Port Said & the Suez Canal, then a stop at Aden and finally onward to Fremantle, Melbourne & Sydney). In all, and making a hefty 24 knots, Genoa to Sydney took 23 days.