Rome's successful bid comes a decade after the capital hosted the World Swimming Championships in 2009.

Rome has won its bid to host the 2022 European Swimming Championships, announced the city's mayor Virginia Raggi.

The 36th edition of the major sporting event will be held in Rome from 11-21 August 2022.

The news comes ten years after Rome hosted the World Swimming Championships in 2009, an event which was successful from a sporting point of view but which led to cases of corruption surrounding the expropriation of land as well as abandoned infrastructure.

The most high-profile building associated with the 2009 championships is the Città dello Sport di Roma, a grandiose project  in the Tor Vergata suburb, designed by Spanish architect and structural engineer Santiago Calatrava.

Construction for the sports complex began in 2005, under the adminstration of former mayor Walter Veltroni, for use during the 2009 championships. However the project soon ran out of funds and was abandoned during the tenure of Veltroni's successor Gianni Alemanno.

In 2015 Rome submitted a formal bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, under Alemanno's successor Ignazio Marino, however the bid was withdrawn by the Italian national Olympic committee (CONI) after Raggi ruled it out on grounds of cost unsustainability, claiming the resources would be better spent on improving city services.

News of Rome's successful bid for the 2022 European Swimming Championships comes several months after Milan-Cortina won the bid for the 2026 winter Olympics.