Crowd attending the inauguration of the Bologna-Florence motorway section of the Autostrada del Sole

The Autostrada del Sole, or A1 motorway, with a length of 761.3 km connecting Milan to Naples, still represents one of the finest achievements of Italy’s postwar boom years. Fedele Cova, the CEO of Società Autostradale, travelled to the United States to gain knowledge of the country’s highways, and the project–advanced in its conception and technology–was completed in record time. The first part to be opened was the Milan-Parma, but Cova, fearing that the project would be stopped at Rome due to lack of funding, made the strategic choice of also immediately initiating work on the Naples-Capua segment.