Spring opening for Nuvola, Luneur and Aquarium in EUR suburb.

Rome’s controversial Nuvola conference centre project in the southern suburb of EUR is to be completed by late May, according to an article in daily Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The incomplete structure, which was designed by prominent Rome architect Massimiliano Fuksas, has suffered from extensive delays and spiralling costs since it was approved officially in 1998, under the tenure of then mayor Francesco Rutelli.

La Repubblica reports that the giant conference centre could be inaugurated by Italian premier Matteo Renzi. Italy's ministry of finance is the majority shareholder of Eur Spa, the company managing the 27,000-sqm site.

The futuristic project, whose name translates from Italian as "cloud", came in for severe criticism last year from the authority for the supervision of public contracts (AVCP) over its “excessive slowness” and “disproportionate” sums paid out to artistic director Fuksas, who has since left that role.

The Nuvola, which is currently having its transparent roof panels fitted, is one of three long-abandoned sites in the EUR district allegedly due to open in spring 2016, according to local media reports.

Since its sudden closure in April 2008, the Luneur park has made the news regularly, thanks to unfounded umours of its imminent reopening as well as petitions calling for the return of the historic funfair which first opened in 1953. Cinecittà Parchi, the company behind the Cinecittà movie theme park just south of EUR, told Rome daily newspaper Il Messaggero that Luneur would reopen in spring with a mixture of new attractions as well as a number of old favourites.

In September the British company Merlin Entertainments announced that Rome's Aquarium would open in the “first few months of 2016.” Like the Luneur park, the Aquarium has been the subject of numerous false starts over the years. Located under the laghetto (lake) in EUR, the cutting-edge facility is expected to contain more than 5,000 sea creatures belonging to over 100 aquatic species, all of which will be housed in 30 themed tanks filled with more than one million litres of water.