Italy's "Sun Motorway": the story of an exceptional infrastructure

I have traveled all around Europe by car and the autostrada del sole is an unmatched engineering marvel in the old continent.

Italian geography is complex. There's a reason the allied forces took way longer from Naples to Milan than from Normandy to Berlin despite heavily outnumbering the Germans.

I was always super proud of the quality and maintenance of Italian highways. Somewhere around the turn of the century I stopped feeling as proud because maintenance started lacking and other countries that I visited (eastern Europe) has also built some very good roads.

One thing to notice though is that the highways are expensive.

From Rome to Milan in a small car you're paying around 60€s in tolls.

That's not a small price, especially as it is way higher than 15 day passes for all highways in some other central European countries.

As a Ligurian, it was not so exceptional, surely, back then and still today passing though so many mountains and valleys keeping the road as straight and leveled as possible was remarkable in engineering terms BUT they have created a monster because back then it was a new road, so normal traffic goes through other roads, and start to took the new shiny fast one once done. Unfortunately NO ONE have planned how to re-create it because back than the idea was that the concrete it's like a natural rock, nearly eternal, so there was no plan on how to rebuild any bridge or tube when it will be needed. Meanwhile old roads essentially a re-paved ancient Roman Via Aurelia, was not much developed, still traversing ANY single Ligurian dwelling, so it's definitively unable to sustain today traffic even for short segment to re-made a single bridge or tube at a time.

Here and there some new segments are built and once done traffic got diverted on the new segment, but the overall aging infrastructure is in a terrible shape and while some new segments advance there is still no complete plan because in many segments there is simply no solution so far to build something new due to excess buildings around, not adapt orography and so on.

That's not an isolated case, essentially all other the world all infra are made without any idea about what to do after their expectable service life BUT the Italian issue is also due to the fast construction: if you build something SLOWLY some parts of a big infra will need to be rebuild at a certain point in future, while the others are still operational, so you can upgrade them at an equally slow speed. If you develop all at once as quick as possible well, it will reach the end of life all at once as well. So an original remarkable effort demand another one, than another one more etc and no one can foresee the economical, political, condition when the infra end of life will be reached.

In general MOST post-WWI infra and buildings are now at end of life, all together, since they was built quickly all together and as any quick thing was badly built, with mass speculation, no intention to even trying imaging the future and so on.

We now know in many fields that creating megaprojects might be exiting but way to often the outcome is TERRIBLE, so it's better build much little things instead of few big. A lesson learnt by many, but still to be learned by many others.

The Sun Motorway between Bologna and Florence is double, as the article says: there is the original road (now called "panoramica") and the new super-direct ("direttissima", also called Variante di Valico).

The old road is still interesting to see, even though it's in worse conditions and it takes a longer time to cross. Give it a try on your next Italian road trip!

Never knew it was a thing until a couple of summers ago our train from Florence to Como was delayed by like 3 hours, so we canceled the tickets, rented a nice little black Fiat 500 and drove. I was enjoying the sights all the way through as is tradition in Italy (and the old continent in general), but if I recall correctly there was a point on the road where we could choose to take the "Panoramica" route and wow, did it pay off. I will forever treasure that little unplanned experience.

On a tangential note, Italian food on the Italian highways at the “Autogrill” chain (gas stations and food joints along the route) is better than 90% of “Italian” restaurants in the USA.

in the year Italy started that "exceptional" project many students in the South had still basic schools in almost open air: that "highway" was the result of a big lobby work by FIAT that wanted all Italians to have a car (their, FIAT, car), and it was something not really needed: oh, yes, it was a bit like the new deal in the US: big infrastructure to have jobs, in a typical Italian contest, a big favour to the Agnelli's family (owner of FIAT and rich industries before, during, and after the war).

Fiat also lobby to remove public buses (filobus, tramway, electrical.. already in place in those years) from main cities: this, of course, to push for cars: not in Torino, their headquarter, but in many many big cities.

To me that motorway is pretty much a sad opera, as sad as all investments made in Dodecanese when Italy took it (for free, without a single serious gunshot) from the Ottomans: there, too, some avveniristic operas.... sea planes bases, big restoration (the walls of Rodos... with a pretty 'exotic' taste, which I like a lot even if is considered a clear example on how not to restore antic city walls :), and of course planty of roads (pretty well done, sure) to serve well in case of military purpose: this in the '20ies when, once again, schools where even more misarable then the 50ies.

Ah, back in the days we were still building public infrastructure. Nowadays everything’s ruined and Mafia is eating up a lot of public spending. Just check the crazy idea of the Messina strait bridge… billions that will be eaten by the clans, instead of maintaining and improving what we already have.

I wish I had the same experience. All my memories of the Italian highways are from being stuck for hours on the Salerno-Reggio on what at the time looked like thousands kms of unpaved and closed roads.

For those interested in the relationship between humans, their supporting infrastructure (not just highways, but also the cities and everything around those), and nature specifically from a perspective of the Autostrada del Mediterraneo: I can suggest this book: www.store.rubbettinoeditore.it/catalogo/presente-infinito/ which tries (just visually through photos) to demonstrate that complicated and precarious relationship.

France has a "autoroute du soleil", too. suffered through many traffic jams in various AC-less shitboxes on my way to go skydiving in northern Spain. Fun times.

I almost thought Italy wasted money on solar freaking roadways...