The making of the Autostrada del Sole – which translates into “Sun Motorway” – is a glorious moment in the history of Italian highways. A history, it shall be noted, that includes both premieres and shames, records and disasters, framed within two one-of-a-kind events with opposite signs.
The very first highway in the world is realized in Italy, in the early 1920s, when engineer Piero Puricelli designs a two-lanes straightaway projected from Milan towards Varese and the Lakes region. Around the middle of the same century, between the 1950s and the 1970s, stands the golden age of the network’s growth.
