Our history

The history of AVR began in the late 1960s, thanks to the passion and entrepreneurial spirit of Galileo Nardecchia and Laura Lanciotti, who started a successful story in the sector, the momentum of which still lives on today with the parent company Galileo e Laura.

See the organisation chart

The company took its first steps in the urban greenery sector, initially mainly in the private sector and with a nursery for retail sales. During the decade, it also entered the world of contracts for the creation and maintenance of green areas, establishing its first relationships with local public bodies in Lazio.

The 1980s marked a decisive development in urban greenery and then infrastructural greenery, with innovative landscaping along major motorways and the company’s first foray into the maintenance sector.

The decade was also marked by the transformation of the retail nursery for plants and garden equipment into a modern Garden Centre.

During the first half of the 1990s, still under the leadership of the Nardecchia family (see People and Governance), despite the disruption caused by the untimely death of founder Galileo Nardecchia in 1991, the company maintained its position as a leading operator in the urban and motorway greenery sector.

AVR was involved in projects such as the redevelopment of Piazza Cavour in Rome, the refurbishment of the football pitch at the Stadio Flaminio and increasingly significant activities in motorway green space maintenance.
In the second half of the decade, a long process of transformation began, following the coordinates of the places that have now become our home.

Our first offices were opened outside the Lazio region and operations and expertise in motorway and road maintenance were gradually expanded, in addition to the initial introduction of ecological services.

As time went by, AVR gradually expanded its scope of action in the road maintenance market, gaining comprehensive experience in various segments: ^signage, barriers, paving, engineering structures, green areas, traffic services and winter operations.

The beginning of the decade also saw the gradual entry into the provision of global services for the management and maintenance of public assets, with the development of growing expertise in the technological and engineering fields.

The first opportunities in the ecology and environment services market were also seized with the acquisition of sanitation services in the municipality of Pisa and the purchase of the first shares in the Acquaviva delle Fonti waste treatment plant from Teorema (today AVR per l’Ambiente).

It was during this decade that AVR established itself as a leader in the global service sector for road and green space management and maintenance in Italy and, for the first time, abroad with the establishment of a company and the opening of an office in Krakow.

The period featured bold investments that gave a decisive boost to the market: the construction of a motorway-style radio room, which is still the beating heart of all information on one of Tuscany’s main arteries, the Florence-Pisa-Livorno motorway. The company also consolidated its presence in the environmental field with the construction of the first plant for the treatment and recovery of road sweepings in Lazio, our flagship facility in Guidonia, with the execution of major remediation works and significant volumes of urban sanitation services. At the end of the decade, the difficult construction of the road connecting Gallico to Gambarie began.

During this decade, the company incurred a significant loss with the painful passing of its founder, Laura Lanciotti.

Over the years, the workforce grew from 50 employees in the 1990s to 2,000 in 2020.

From its first base in Via Tensi in Rome, the company now has 14 main offices, four plants and many branches throughout the country, with a presence in 14 regions in Italy and Poland, ensuring uniform coverage. From its beginnings as a nursery, AVR now operates in three markets: local infrastructure, the environment, and engineering and technology.

This journey has been accompanied by incessant changes, both in terms of image and corporate structure, as well as a recent crisis that has now been overcome.

From nursery to today, AVR is tomorrow… always looking ahead and working hard.
This is who we are, watch our story here.