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Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

Rome submits formal 2024 Olympic bid

Capital underlines its "incomparable beauty”.

Rome formally submitted its bid for the 2024 Olympics after its candidate application papers were signed by the city's mayor Ignazio Marino, bid leader Luca Cordero di Montezemolo and Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) president Giovanni Malagò on 11 September.

The bid, which was approved by the city council in June, has now been sent to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which will select the host city in 2017. The other cities submitting bids for the 2024 Olympics include Hamburg, Paris, Los Angeles and Budapest.

Underling its “incomparable beauty,” the Rome bid states: “No other city in the world can offer an artistic, historical and cultural heritage that stretches over such an ample arc of time.”

The candidacy comes three years after then-premier Mario Monti dropped Rome's idea of hosting the 2020 Olympics due to the economic situation in Italy. The proposal to bid for the 2024 games was first mooted by Monti’s successor Enrico Letta in 2013, and has strong support from current Italian premier Matteo Renzi.

Organisers behind the bid are reportedly considering a budget of €6 billion – of which about €1.5 billion would be supplied by the IOC. This “cost-conscious” budget, which would work out at roughly half of what London spent in 2012, would make use of the city’s existing sporting infrastructure such as Stadio Olimpico and Olympic swimming pool.

However Rome would still need to build an Olympic village, with CONI suggesting the completion of the half-built Città dello Sport di Roma complex located in the south-east suburb Tor Vergata. Designed for the World Swimming Championships in 2009 by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the grandiose sports complex began a decade ago under the administration of former mayor Walter Veltroni. However the project soon ran out of funds and was abandoned, with the swimming events taking place at the Foro Italico instead.

Working in Rome’s favour is its successful bid for the 1960 Olympics, and the fact that the 2024 games would coincide with many construction or renovation projects in preparation for the city’s 2025 Jubilee, or Holy Year, which occurs every 25 years.

However the prospect of corruption could put the capital at a disadvantage, particularly in light of the recent scandal at the Milan Expo 2015 and the ongoing Mafia Capitale case involving alleged criminal infiltration of Rome’s city administration.

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