Vittoriano
First Section
The history of railways in Italy began on October 3, 1839, when Ferdinand II of Bourbon, King of the Two Sicilies, inaugurated the Naples-Portici section. By 1861, the year of Italian Unification, the network boasted over 2,000 kilometers of lines, which were scattered in a disorganized manner across the Peninsula and often built with foreign capital, expertise, and materials.
At the birth of the Kingdom, the train already represented a powerful symbol of progress and unification: for this reason, too, the new Italian government promoted an ambitious program aimed at uniting and standardizing the different regional systems, thus giving physical shape to the nation. Despite a series of problems, concessions to private companies, supported by foreign investors, ensured the rapid expansion of the network. In terms of expertise, the burgeoning railway sector served as a laboratory for generations of technicians, who quickly closed the gap with other industrialized countries.
As evidenced by the works of many artists—including De Nittis and Morbelli—within a few decades, the train entered the daily lives of Italians, imposed a common time, created new professions, and reshaped distances and mindsets. By the early twentieth century, the Peninsula could be considered connected from north to south, through a truly national railway system. In this field, too, the vision of Camillo Cavour had become a reality.
