Let us start this story of the six decades of the European Investment Bank with a project that began 2 200 years ago and was finally brought to completion only in our own decade. Crossing the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines between the cities of Florence and Bologna has always been a challenge.

The mountain ridges shaped the history of Italy—and the design of the country’s road system. They were a barrier to Hannibal, the Carthaginian military commander, whose forces ran into serious difficulties in the marshes of the River Arno when he crossed the Apennines and came down to Pistoia and Fiesole in 217 BC.