All started on the evening of January 13th, 2012. The Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia, carrying 4,252 people on its first leg of a Mediterranean cruise, struck an underwater rock while sailing too close to Isola del Giglio island, off the coast of Italy. The ship started capsizing and an evacuation effort began with the assistance of locals as well as the Italian Air Force. While most people made it to shore safely, 32 passengers and crew died during the disaster.
In the following months, one of the largest and most expensive (its total cost reached $1.2 billion) salvage operations ever commenced, aiming to refloat and remove the half-sunk cruise ship. Using huge sponsons attached to its sides as well as an underwater steel platform, Costa Concordia took an upright position on September 2013 and was finally refloated in July 2014. The ship was finally towed to the port of Genoa where it was moored against a wharf that had been specially prepared to receive the vessel for dismantling. This operation is expected to last several years.
Since 2014 only a handful of photos from the interior of Consta Concordia have been published, mainly by the Italian Carabinieri. Last year, German photographer Jonathan Danko Kielkowski swam 200 metres to the ship and jumped on board for a photoshoot. In his photos we see that much of the ship’s furniture and equipment remain on board. Among them, luggage, wheelchairs, prams and other personal belongings of passengers who abandoned the ship on that January night four years ago.
