A little history

Middle fiftys, some youg boys from Bologna –among them Gianni Selleri – desiring adventures and holidays begin to spend Summer on the Romagna Coast. Some of these boys are handicapped. Holidays become for them a titanic undertaking: spending the night in boxrooms or cellars “without architectural obstacles”. At that time there are actually no facilities fitted for handicapped.
This will be the spur to search out a place, available for everybody, between Viserbella and Milano Marittima. After ten years of searching they find in Igea Marina (V.le Pinzon 254) a building used as a seaside hohliday camp which owner was once the italian Croce Rossa. In time it will be adopted here all the adjustments dued to make the accessibility and autonomy of people whose mobility is crippled or reduced easy.

The unit is called “Villa Marina “ and is classed as “House for holidays”. It is open from June to September. Its receptivity is of 120 beds. Rooms have from 2 to 5 beds.
“Villa Marina “ houses singles, families, groups in package tour. There are no specific rules but the respect of the meals hours and of the common rules of living together.

It’s not a sheltered accomodation but it’s an open environnemnt where everybody can relate with everybody and choose his own activitys and times, like in any other holiday place.
This initiative’s main aim is to offer some days of holiday and sun treatment to disabled persons who could not find place in normal hotels because of architectural obstacles.
Every summer stay in “Villa Marina “ about 600 persons for a total attendance of 7/9000.

“Villa Marina” ANIEP’s activities set up a big heritage of the integration experience but it’s above
all a kind of “workshop” where the traditional tourism criteria - “holiday: time of fun and relax- may have a confrontation with people with different behaviour, appearance, communicativeness, expressiveness and their rights of going on holidays.

ANIEP’s experience in these years with “Villa Marina” confirms that it’s still necessary to move into actions to offer handicapped people an adeguate tourism possibility.