The award ceremony

The Roma Continua project wins the 'A Vision for Rome' competition

The proposal aims to make the city more innovative and habitable. Thirty-six teams and professionals from 29 countries participated in the competition. At the award ceremony, the controversy over the Roma Capitale bill was reignited

by Pietro Menzani

20 May 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

It is the Roma Continua project that won the international competition A Vision for Rome. The call for ideas, promoted by the Roma Regeneration foundation under the patronage of the Region and Roma Capitale, was launched in March 2025 at Mipim in Cannes with the aim of revitalising the city by making it more liveable and more attractive to investors. A total of 1,200 professionals from 29 countries took part in the first phase of the competition, with a total of 36 teams.

Roma Continues

No longer simply a collection of streets and monuments, but a true living ecosystem. This is how the winning project, drawn up by the team consisting of IT'S, OMA, LGSMA, OKRA, NET Engineering and other collaborators, conceives the city. Roma Continua identifies five pivotal principles - care, beauty, knowledge, movement, reuse and grafting - to guide the revitalisation of the capital by following an urban strategy capable of integrating landscape, mobility, innovation and regeneration of the existing heritage.

Among the proposals put forward by the team is the definition of five green corridors connected to the Tiber and its tributaries, along which the Fori dell'innovazione - poles of knowledge that create a network between universities, start-ups and businesses - will unfold, creating a ring connecting the centre and the periphery. The project then proposes to alleviate the tourist pressure on the historic centre through the enhancement of new itineraries and lesser-known neighbourhoods. The idea behind Roma Continua is to make the capital a more accessible, innovative and liveable city.

The competition

The response to the call for ideas launched last year "exceeded all our expectations," said Gianluca Lucignano, president of the Roma Regeneration foundation, adding that it is a result "that not only confirms the widespread desire to contribute to the construction of an organic and integrated vision for the city's development, but also reaffirms how Rome - for its uniqueness, beauty and historical and cultural heritage - continues to represent a place of global interest and a potential still largely to be expressed, not a city to be guarded like a museum, but a living reality, capable of evolving and generating new value'.

Some of the recurring themes addressed by the competing proposals are mobility, health, climate, inclusion and water. The aim of the competition, which involved professionals from a variety of fields - from architects to engineers, landscape architects, historians, geographers and economists - is to develop a new vision of the city that puts the citizen and urban attractiveness at the centre. According to Lucignano, "a wealth of ideas has emerged from the competition that we hope will provide institutions with a concrete working basis, to support - if they so wish - the capital's urban planning and development choices, under careful public direction".

In addition to the winner, the projects Roma da dentro, Roma Contemporanea, Roma splendida preparazione al futuro, New Times New Roma and Roma città delle conoscenze made it to the final round. The award ceremony took place today in the Auditorium della Tecnica of Confindustria, during the second Roma Regeneration Forum.

Meloni "Con la riforma diamo a Roma Capitale il valore che merita"

The controversy over Roma Capitale

It was precisely on the occasion of the announcement of the winner that the debate between the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, and the majority on the constitutional bill for Roma Capitale flared up again. In fact, both the mayor and Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, Minister for Institutional Reforms, were present at the award ceremony, and a heated exchange of banter took place between the two.

Referring to the bill, which was approved at first reading by the Chamber on 29 April with the abstention of the Democratic Party deputies, Gualtieri called for the opposition and the government to talk to each other. To the mayor's words, Casellati replied that 'the reform of Roma Capitale was not blocked by the majority, but by the Democratic Party, so I say to Mayor Gualtieri that he should make the call, not us'. The minister then called the abstention of the Democratic Party a 'disappointing, inexplicable turn'.