On 13 January 2012, the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground at night off the Tuscan coast and pitched over onto its side, leaving 32 people dead.
As technicians begin a complex operation to refloat the cruise liner, here is a timeline of the tragic events since it set sail for the final time.
2012
- 13 January: The cruise liner sets sail from the port of Civitavecchia near Rome, carrying 4,229 people from 70 countries.
Many passengers are sitting down to dinner when the ship strikes a rocky outcrop off the Tuscan island of Giglio after captain Francesco Schettino orders a sail-by.
The impact causes a blackout and the ship begins to list. Evacuation gets underway in the darkness more than an hour after the collision, by which point the lifeboats on one side of the tilting liner are unusable.
People jump into the freezing waters to escape, while Mr Schettino is found ashore.
- 14 January: Prosecutors detain Mr Schettino and his first officer on charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship. Schettino is placed under house arrest three days later.
- 17 January: Italian media leak a transcript of a telephone conversation during the evacuation between a shaken Schettino on shore and a furious port official who orders him to "get back on board."
Passengers in several countries start lodging suits against the ship's owner, Costa Crociere, which on 27 January agrees to pay uninjured passengers at least €11,000 each in compensation.
- 12 February: Salvage workers begin pumping 2,400 tonnes of fuel from the liner in a bid to avoid an oil slick off Giglio's pristine coastline.
- 13 September: A pre-trial report says Costa Crociere may have failed to act promptly in the disaster, while still heaping much of the blame on Schettino - dubbed "Captain Coward" in the local press.
2013
- 10 April: Costa Crociere accepts limited responsibility for the disaster and is controversially fined just €1m.
- 17 July: The trial of Mr Schettino begins in the city of Grosseto.
- 20 July: A court accepts plea bargains for five other suspects - four crew members and Costa Crociere's emergency unit executive - who receive prison sentences ranging from one year and six months to two years and 10 months.
- 17 September: The ship, which weighs 114,500 tons and is the length of almost three soccer fields, is hoisted upright in the biggest ever salvage operation of a passenger ship, which lasted 20 hours.
- 8 October: Remains are found at the wreck of a female Italian passenger, one of the two victims still missing. Remains of an Indian waiter are still missing.
2014
- 6 May: The salvage, planned for June, is delayed after a giant flotation tank attached to the wreck falls off.
- 30 June: The government chooses the port of Genoa as the centre for the scrapping operation, expected to cost around €100m.
- 14 July: The ship is floated off the underwater platform on which it has been resting since the crash.
