Migrants danced and burst into song as a rescue ship brought them into the Italian port of Taranto at dawn on Tuesday, days after they were found drifting in a rubber dinghy in the Mediterranean.
The 62 mostly West and Central Africans packed up their bedding as they celebrated the end of a political tussle over their fate - Italy had initially refused to take them and only relented at the weekend.
"Hopefully they can leave these terrible experiences they've lived behind and Europe will treat them with humanity," said a spokeswoman for the Spanish charity Open Arms, which found the migrants 50 miles off Libya on Wednesday last week.
Overall, numbers of migrants reaching Europe are way down from the peak in 2015. But thousands fleeing poverty and conflict across the Middle East and Africa still attempt the perilous journey, fueling support for anti-immigration parties across the continent.