Aeroporti di Roma Brand Guidelines: A 1974 Operator, Two Rome Airports & Mundys

A 1974 company for two airports.

Aeroporti di Roma, known as ADR, is the company that runs both of Rome’s airports: Fiumicino, officially Leonardo da Vinci, on the coast south-west of the city, and Ciampino, south-east of the centre. Italian Wikipedia gives its founding date as 12 February 1974, when Aeroporti di Roma S.p.A. was set up and every activity at the capital’s airports was given to a single operator, which became the exclusive concessionaire for running and developing the Rome airport system. The same encyclopaedia’s article on Fiumicino says a state law of 1973 gave the airport’s management to the new company, which began work in 1974.

The airports are older than the company. Italian Wikipedia says Ciampino opened in 1916 as an airship and military field and stayed in military use until 1947, and that it was Rome’s only airport until 15 January 1961, when Leonardo da Vinci airport at Fiumicino was inaugurated. Fiumicino was then enlarged so often after opening that the encyclopaedia calls it “a work in continuous evolution.” Its original terminal came out of a design competition: the final project combined the winning scheme by the engineer Riccardo Morandi and Andrea Zavitteri with ideas from a second entry by Amedeo Luccichenti and Vincenzo Monaco, and was approved in 1958.

The two airports now do different jobs. Italian Wikipedia describes Fiumicino as the hub for international and intercontinental scheduled and charter traffic, with Terminals 1 and 3 and a separate Terminal 5 for state, military, diplomatic and humanitarian flights, and Ciampino as the city airport used mainly by low-cost airlines, express couriers and business aviation. In 2008, it says, the two airports together handled more than 40 million passengers.

From state company to the Atlantia group.

ADR began as a public company and was sold in stages. Italian Wikipedia says privatisation began in July 1997, when 45 per cent of the share capital was placed with Italian and foreign investors through a public and private offer, and was completed in 2000, when the state sold its remaining holdings. English Wikipedia, in a short entry, dates ADR’s role as operator to 1997, “the year of privatization,” and says the company once held minority stakes in Genoa airport and, from 1998 to 2005, in Airports Company South Africa.

Control then passed through a chain of holding companies. From 2000, Italian Wikipedia says, ADR was controlled by the holding company Gemina, which took a majority through a takeover bid; after 2007 the Benetton family, through its Luxembourg investment vehicle Sintonia, became the main indirect shareholder. In 2013 Gemina was merged into Atlantia, the Benetton family’s transport company, and ADR became part of that group.

Atlantia itself changed. Italian Wikipedia’s article on the group says a takeover bid launched on 10 October 2022 by Schema Alfa, a vehicle owned 65 per cent by the Benetton holding company Edizione and 35 per cent by the American private equity firm Blackstone, took Atlantia off the stock exchange on 9 December 2022, and that the company took the name Mundys on 15 March 2023. Italian Wikipedia gives ADR’s shareholders at December 2025 as Mundys with about 99.4 per cent, the Metropolitan City of Rome and the town of Fiumicino with small stakes, and other investors with the rest. Mundys also holds the majority of the company behind Nice Côte d’Azur airport, the same source says.

Two big building projects mark ADR’s recent record. Italian Wikipedia says a new international boarding area, Area E, for flights outside the Schengen zone, opened at Fiumicino on 21 December 2016 with 22 new gates, and that a new Pier A for Schengen and domestic flights opened on 18 May 2022 with 23 gates and a shopping gallery of 21 shops.

How airport operators present themselves.

An airport operator has an unusual design problem: most of the people who meet its brand never think about the company at all. They read its signs. Wayfinding is the core of the identity, and operators typically commission a sign typeface, a pictogram set and a colour code for departures, arrivals, gates and exits, then apply them to everything from motorway approach signs to the backs of check-in desks. The corporate logo often sits quietly in a corner while the directions do the work.

Architecture carries the rest of the image. Operators’ own photography tends to favour terminals at dusk, when glazed façades glow against a darkening sky, long roofs read as clean lines and an apron full of parked aircraft becomes a pattern of lights. Interiors are shown as wide, calm halls rather than queues, and new piers or façades are announced with renderings long before they open.

The numbers come next. Route maps radiating from a single hub, new long-haul destinations and passenger milestones are standard material for press pages and annual reports, because traffic is what airlines, investors and local governments want to see. Alongside them sit pages on sustainability and noise: carbon programmes, noise contour maps, insulation schemes for nearby homes and community funds, often written for neighbours rather than travellers.

Finally, an airport is also a shopping centre and a lounge network. Retail, food and lounge promotions follow a lighter, more commercial register, with seasonal campaigns and partner brands, while investor reports return to a sober corporate grid of charts and tables. The operators in this series show how one company can speak in all of these voices at once: public utility, landlord, retailer and listed or state-owned business.

Piers, offices, a rail plan and a runway.

ADR presents itself through what it builds and the awards it collects. Italian Wikipedia gives its slogan as “Together, Beyond Flying” and lists a group of subsidiaries that includes its own engineering and infrastructure companies, ADR Ingegneria and ADR Infrastrutture, as well as security, cleaning, mobility and energy businesses. Those two in-house firms designed Open – FCO Smart Workplace, an office building facing Terminal 1 that ADR opened in July 2026, the Rome news site Canale Dieci reported on 23 July 2026. The report said it was built between January 2024 and April 2026, covers 16,000 square metres, holds up to 600 people and would house the local offices of airlines including ITA Airways, Emirates and Delta, and that it was designed to the criteria for LEED certification.

Recognition is a large part of the company’s public voice. Italian Wikipedia says Fiumicino received Airports Council International’s Airport Service Quality award for Europe in 2018 and, in June 2023, an ACI Europe award in the category for hubs with more than 40 million passengers for the fifth time; Canale Dieci wrote in July 2026 that the airport had been recognised in that category for the eighth time since 2018. On 27 October 2026 the travel site SiViaggia reported that Fiumicino was the overall winner of the Routes World Awards 2026, and also won the category for airports with more than 30 million passengers.

Some plans are still plans. On 13 May 2026 the newspaper site Quotidiano.net reported that Italy’s new national airports plan to 2035, presented by the transport minister, included a fourth runway at Fiumicino; ADR welcomed it and called for the approval process, which involves the environment ministry, to move faster. On 28 May 2026 the Corriere della Sera reported that ADR was proposing a new rail service to the airport, with trains every six minutes on three routes from Rome’s Termini and Tiburtina stations, while noting that the plan might not go ahead.

For a design guide, Aeroporti di Roma shows how an operator can build a name separate from the airports it runs. Compare SEA Milan Airports, which runs Milan’s airports, and Fraport. For this guide we use lagoon teal, travertine sand and limestone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Aeroporti di Roma’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.