The next concert you go to might take place in an airport

The RCF Arena Reggio Emilia is an open-air concert hall that can accommodate up to 100,000 people. Photo: AFP

Airports are simply places of passage for thousands of travellers who go there every day. But some, like the Reggio Emilia Airport, not far from the Italian cities of Parma and Bologna, are getting a facelift allowing them to be transformed into entertainment venues.

At the root of this metamorphosis was a simple observation: like most airports in the world, the one in Reggio Emilia has a huge surface area. For a long time, part of this area of several hundred hectares was an unused buffer zone, separating planes from passengers. But this is no longer the case.