One of Italy's most notorious eyesores, a huge unfinished hotel complex on a Ligurian island, disappeared Friday after decades of campaigning by environmentalists.
Some 50 kg of dynamite was used to bring down the seven-floor building, known as the Scheletrone ('big skeleton'), overlooking a beach on the island of Palmaria, which forms part of the region's Cinque Terre UNESCO World Heritage Site.
''This is a historic moment,'' said Liguria President Claudio Burlando after giving the radio signal to ignite the explosives, which had been stashed inside 224 pillars that supported the structure.
The dynamite went off at six intervals of 20 milliseconds, bringing down the main section of the complex and shrouding the beach in an enormous cloud of dust.
Environmental organisation Legambiente celebrated the demolition of the so-called 'ecomonster', built in 1968 and considered by many environmentalists the ugliest building in Italy.
''The demolition of the Scheletrone is a happy ending to a battle that we began almost 20 years ago,'' said Legambiente vicepresident Sebastiano Venneri.
''It was an 8,000 square metre monstrosity that defaced one of the most beautiful places in Liguria for more than 40 years''.
The organisation added that it was ''a great day that gives us hope for other buildings still standing that humiliate the Bel Paese''.
The Scheletrone featured in the top five ecomonsters in a dossier compiled by Legambiente last year, and on Friday the organisation called for the demolition of the four other worst eyesores along Italian coasts.
On the demolition wishlist are the Alimuri Hotel in Vico Equense in Campania, the Lido Rossello buildings at Realmonte in Sicily, the 'stilt building' at Falerna in Calabria and the Torre Mileto village at Lesina in Puglia.
In 2006 another major eyesore, the 13-storey beachside Punta Perotti apartment complex in Bari, was demolished in three spectacular explosions over a weekend, while city residents who flocked to watch the spectacle drowned out the echoes of the structure's collapse with their applause.
