It used to take two days of travel on bumpy, dust-caked roads to reach Naples from Milan. On October 4th, 1964, that travel time was slashed to seven hours. After eight years of work, the A1 highway was completed a surprising three months early–a first and last in Italy, it seems–and not without a few casualties, sacrificed between elevated bridges over the Tiber and rivers of bitumen. (Look to your right heading onto the highway from the Firenze Nord tollbooth, and you’ll see Giovanni Michelucci’s funky Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista, a church dedicated to the many lost in the road’s construction.) 

The A1, or Autostrada del Sole (Highway of the Sun), was a look to the future, one that promised to jump-start an economic boom and provide access to the sunny south, perfect for the new era of paid holiday vacation. The name was a guarantee of happiness–a highway that, no matter how concrete, invited sunbathing and good sea air, far from the “gray” and “fog” of northern Italian cities.