Flame arrives in Italy for Milano Cortina Winter Games

The Olympic flame has arrived in Rome on Thursday in preparation for a two-month torch relay designed to stir excitement across Italy before the Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo in February.

Italian Olympic tennis doubles champion Jasmine Paolini and Milano Cortina Games organising chief Giovanni Malago carried the lantern down the steps of an ITA Airways flight from Athens.

The Italian hosts had received the flame in a ceremony at Athens' Panathenaic Stadium earlier on Thursday.

In a scaled-down event due to heavy rain warnings, as was the case when the flame was lit in ancient Olympia last week, the handover took place inside the vast marble-clad stadium.

"Italy is proud of its Olympic heritage... as we get ready to write the next chapter in our Olympic story," said Malago, with only a handful of officials and spectators present in Athens.

Italy, a winter sports powerhouse, last hosted the Winter Olympics in 2006 with the Turin Games.

"It will be an incredible 63-day adventure," Malago said, speaking ahead of the torch relay which starts on Saturday from Rome's fascist-era Stadio dei Marmi.

"After two decades of waiting, the Olympic flame is returning to Italy," he added.

The 12,000-km journey will take in all 20 Italian regions plus 110 provinces and pass through 60 Italian cities and 300 towns with a total of 10,001 torchbearers.

The flame will visit famous landmarks including the Colosseum in Rome and the Grand Canal in Venice, with stops in southern cities such as Palermo and Naples to generate interest in areas where winter sports are not as prominent.

It will be in Cortina d’Ampezzo on January 26 – exactly 70 years after the opening ceremony of the 1956 Games at the same venue - and the relay will finish on February 6 at the opening ceremony at Milan's San Siro stadium.