The Chinese General Consul Wang Xinxia inaugurates installation of “Confucius” statue at the airport

Florence, Tuesday 17 December 2013 – The new Customer Service Info Point officially opened at Florence airport. The new offices, designed and managed in collaboration with the Comune di Firenze, are active during airport opening times and will deal with passengers’ needs and requirements concerning aspects of the airport and tourist information.    .

At the ribbon cutting ceremony, Town Councillor Sara Biagiotti, the Director of Enac Donatella Barsotti, the Chairman of AdF Marco Carrai and the Managing Director Mauro Pollio, were present to emphasize the importance of this investment to improve and personalize services to passengers and tourists to which both AdF and the Comune di Firenze are committed.

The same day saw the installation of a statue of “Confucius” by Chinese artist  Zhang Huan, whose exhibition “L’Anima e la Materia” was held last summer in Florence at Palazzo Vecchio and Forte Belvedere.    The statue will remain at the airport until next spring, testifying to the encounter between two great capitals of culture: Florence, home of the Renaissance and Shanghai, one of the creative capitals of the twenty-first century.  

The ceremony was attended by the General Consul of the Chinese People’s Republic, Dr. Wang Xinxia, together with major representatives of local institutions, the Regione Toscana and the Comune di Firenze, to whom a letter of thanks from the sculptor was delivered, the Provinces of Florence and Prato and  leading local authorities.   The event provided an excellent opportunity to underline the friendship between Tuscany and China and commemorate the terrible events which recently occurred in Prato.    

The objective of AdF was to trigger a project which, as Chairman Carrai observed, “aims to transform a non-place, like an airport, into a place in which a strong territorial identity, characterized by its remarkable artistic heritage, can be represented within our airport.  A project which will be further developed with other exceptional presentations”.   

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