Italy's premier shipbuilder Fincantieri has started work on its latest and biggest luxury cruise ship, the Carnival Dream.
The deluxe boat, commissioned by Carnival Cruise Lines of the USA, will be built at Fincantieri's shipyards at the port of Monfalcone in northeastern Italy.
The delivery of the ship is planned for 2009.
The Carnival Dream will be the largest ship ever built by Fincantieri: 130,000 tonnes, 306 m long and 37 m wide.
It will have 1,823 cabins, 1,145 of which external and provided with a private terrace.
Fincantieri has 16 ships under construction including the prestigious Queen Elizabeth for the historic British line Cunard.
The Monfalcone facility is set to build six ships including the Carnival Magic which should be delivered in the spring of 2011 and the Ruby Prince which is due for delivery to Carnival's Princess Cruises in the autumn of 2008.
Other orders include the Ventura for P&O Cruises, the UK unit of Carnival, which will be delivered in end-March 2008, and an as-yet unnamed ship, also for P&O Cruises.
Since 1990 Fincantieri has built 41 cruise ships.
It beat out stiff international competition to win the Queen Elizabeth contract in October.
The new 2,092-passenger ocean liner will be built at Monfalcone at a cost of approximately 500 million euros.
The new Queen Elizabeth will be the second largest vessel that Cunard has ever built after the Queen Mary 2. It is scheduled to enter service in the autumn of 2010.
The name of the liner, which has been approved by Buckingham Palace, recalls the ocean liner which sailed the Atlantic for Cunard from 1938 to 1968. When it was built, the first Queen Elizabeth was the biggest liner in the world.
At the end of November Fincantieri presented Cunard with another giant cruise ship, the 90,000-ton Queen Victoria, which will carry 2,000 passengers.
Cunard already owns and operates the two most famous ocean liners in the world, Queen Elizabeth 2 and Queen Mary 2, which were built in Scotland and France.
