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Italy's Sun Motorway (2021)

May 19 1956 marked the laying of the first stone of the A1 Milan-Naples: check the gallery Domus and discover the story of the Sun Motorway in Italy.

This is a well-deserved acknowledgement for a series of structural experiments dared by Silvano Zorzi – he designs, among other things, the prestressed reinforced concrete bridge over the Po river in Piacenza, that is at the time the largest in Europe of its kind – by Riccardo Morandi – who works on most of the viaducts on the complex Bologna-Florence section – as well as by Giulio Krall, Arrigo Carè and Giorgio Giannelli, Carlo Cestelli Guidi and Guido Oberti. This mass of constructions of different looks and nature is grafted within the Italian territory, which many consider as unique for its “excess of geographical, anthropological and cultural thickness” – this is for instance the opinion of Giacomo Polin, an architect and the author of Il paesaggio dell’autostrada italiana(Autostrade per l’Italia, 2011). Its construction is accompanied from the very beginning by the narrative of the connection between North and South, between the most industrialized part of Italy and the problematic Mezzogiorno – the most vigilant readers will certainly spy a patronizing accent in the “ del Sole ” nickname, hinting primarily at a North-South trajectory, escaping the foggy winters of the Po Valley.

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