A large industrial building site on the outskirts of Ravenna, the 8mm camera of Adriano Panzavolta, surveyor at the Provincial Roads Office, films the landscape in profound transformation and the work in progress and the excavation of a large pipeline. The day is the first of February 1957, and the construction site is that of ANIC, the Azienda Nazionale Idrogenazione Combustibili (National Fuel Hydrogenation Company), which Enrico Mattei wanted with great determination. The ANIC, inaugurated in 1958, would be one of the largest chemical plants in Europe. The Petrochemical Complex will use methane gas extracted from the subsoil of that area of the Po Valley and the Adriatic Sea. For the first time, the gas will be used as a raw material for the manufacture of chemical products.

These were years of great transformations in the Ravenna area. Within a few years, the landscape will be unrecognisable, the port will expand, factories will welcome thousands of workers. The city will change radically, from agricultural to industrial, with new inhabitants coming from all over Italy. And ANIC will be the symbol of the economic rebirth and prosperity achieved and will mark a point of no return in the transformation of the landscape of that area.