The ill-fated Costa Concordia has begun floating on its own for the first time since it crashed in January 2012, as an unprecedented salvage operation gets underway to raise it.
The ship, measuring 290 metres – the length of three football fields and twice as big as the Titanic – is slowly being refloated off the island of Giglio to be towed away for scrapping in Genoa.
"The ship is floating," Franco Porcellacchia, the chief engineer in charge of the operation, told reporters.
"It is now about one metre off the underwater platform it was lying on," he said on Monday, adding that it would be raised another metre before being shifted towards the open sea.
Salvage workers were pumping air into giant tanks fixed to its sides to expel water and act as floating devices. The full refloating is expected to take six to seven days.
With 4229 people from 70 countries on board, the luxury liner foundered after hitting a group of rocks just off the coast and keeled over in a tragedy that claimed 32 lives.
