Flipping Book | The new Panama Canal | Salini Impregilo Library

12 Beyond the rapids of the Chagres River, beyond the green waters of Gatun Lake, beyond the tides of the two oceans that see each other without ever touching, there lives a dream—cradled for hundreds of years—of cutting a Continent in two, and thus offering the world the most amazing of shortcuts. It is a dream fueled by the vision of those adventurers who were the first, starting from the sixteenth century, to recognize a path submerged in the impenetrable vegetation of the jun- gle. That desire for discovery, together with the ambition to open a breach that might really change the maritime trade routes, was the trigger that resulted in the involvement of the top- notch engineering companies and the most efficient organizational machines in the world in the most ambitious of all challenges: digging a canal in the isthmus of Panama. One hundred years since the opening of that very first Canal, Salini Impregilo—together with other important players in the sector—was asked to double the enterprise by digging a new canal, a larger, more modern one with less of an impact on the environment as com- A Visionary Ambition Pietro Salini