Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car

The following are the ancient and modern place-names on this itinerary:

Placentia (Piacenza)

Florentia (Firenzuola)

Fidentia (Borgo S. Donnino)

Parma (Parma)

Tannetum (Taneto)

Regium Lepidi (Reggio)

Mutina (Modena)

Forum Gallorum (near Castel Franco)

Bononia (Bologna)

Claterna (Quaderna)

Forum Cornelii (Imola)

Faventia (Faenza)

Forum Livii (Forli)

Forum Populii (Forlimpopoli)

Caesena (Cesena)

Ad Confluentes (near Savignamo)

Ariminum (Rimini)

Connecting with the Via Æmilia another important Roman road ran from the valley of the Casentino across the Apennines to Piacenza. It was the route traced by a part of the itinerary of Dante in the “Divina Commedia,” and as such it is a historic highway with which the least sentimentally inclined might be glad to make acquaintance.

Another itinerary, perhaps better known to the automobilist, is that which follows the Ligurian coast from Nice to Spezia, continuing thence to Rome by the Via Aurelia. This coast road of Liguria passed through Nice to Luna on the Gulf of Spezia, the towns en route being as follows: —

The chief of these great Roman roadways of old whose itineraries can be traced to-day are:

These ancient Roman roads were at their best in Campania and Etruria. Campania was traversed by the Appian Way, the greatest highway of the Romans, though indeed its original construction by Appius Claudius only extended to Capua. The great highroads proceeding from Rome crossed Etruria almost to the full extent; the Via Aurelia, from Rome to Pisa and Luna; the Via Cassia and the Via Clodia.

The great Roman roads were marked with division stones or bornes every thousand paces, practically a kilometre and a half, a little more than our own mile. These mile-stones of Roman times, many of which are still above ground (milliarii lapides), were sometimes round and sometimes square, and were entirely bare of capitals, being mere stone posts usually standing on a squared base of a somewhat larger area.

A graven inscription bore in Latin the name of the Consul or Emperor under whom each stone was set up and a numerical indication as well.

Caius Gracchus, away back in the second century before Christ, was the inventor of these aids to travel. The automobilist appreciates the development of this accessory next to good roads themselves, and if he stops to think a minute he will see that the old Romans were the inventors of many things which he fondly thinks are modern.

The automobilist in Italy has, it will be inferred, cause to regret the absence of the fine roads of France once and again, and he will regret it whenever he wallows into a six inch deep rut and finds himself not able to pull up or out, whilst the drivers of ten yoke ox-teams, drawing a block of Carrara marble as big as a house, call down the imprecations of all the saints in the calendar on his head. It’s not the automobilist’s fault, such an occurrence, nor the ox-driver’s either; but for fifty kilometres after leaving Spezia, and until Lucca and Livorno are reached, this is what may happen every half hour, and you have no recourse except to accept the situation with fortitude and revile the administration for allowing a roadway to wear down to such a state, or for not providing a parallel thoroughfare so as to divide the different classes of traffic. There is no such disgracefully used and kept highway in Europe as this stretch between Spezia and Lucca, and one must of necessity pass over it going from Genoa to Pisa unless he strikes inland through the mountainous country just beyond Spezia, by the Strada di Reggio for a détour of a hundred kilometres or more, coming back to the sea level road at Lucca.

Throughout the peninsula the inland roads are better as to surface than those by the coast, though by no means are they more attractive to the tourist by road. This is best exemplified by a comparison of the inland and shore roads, each of them more or less direct, between Florence and Rome.

The great Strada di grande Communicazione from Florence to Rome (something less than three hundred kilometres all told, a mere mouthful for a modern automobile) runs straight through the heart of old Siena, entering the city by the Porta Camollia and leaving by the Porta Romana, two kilometres of treacherous, narrow thoroughfare, though readily enough traced because it is in a bee-line. The details are here given as being typical of what the automobilist may expect to find in the smaller Italian cities. There are, in Italy, none of those unexpected right-angle turns that one comes upon so often in French towns, at least not so many of them, and there are no cork-screw thoroughfares though many have the “rainbow curve,” to borrow Mark Twain’s expression.

On through Chiusi, Orvieto and Viterbo runs the highroad direct to the gates of Rome, for the most part a fair road, but rising and falling from one level to another in trying fashion to one who would set a steady pace.

It is with respect to the grades on Italian roads, too, that one remarks a falling off from French standards. North of Florence, in the valley of the Mugello, we, having left the well-worn roads in search of something out of the common, found a bit of seventeen per cent. grade. This was negotiated readily enough, since it was of brief extent, but another rise of twenty-five per cent. (it looked forty-five from the cushions of a low-hung car) followed and on this we could do nothing. Fortunately there was a way around, as there usually is in Europe, so nothing was lost but time, and we benefited by the acquisition of some knowledge concerning various things which we did not before possess. And we were content, for that was what we came for anyway.

From Florence south, by the less direct road via Arezzo, Perugia and Terni, there is another surprisingly sudden rise but likewise brief. It is on this same road that one remarks from a great distance the towers of Spoleto piercing the sky at a seemingly enormous height, while the background mountain road over the Passo della Somma rises six hundred and thirty metres and tries the courage of every automobilist passing this way.

To achieve many of these Italian hill-towns one does not often rise abruptly but rather almost imperceptibly, but here, in ten kilometres, say half a dozen miles, the Strada di grande Communicazione rises a thousand feet, and that is considerable for a road supposedly laid out by military strategists.

As a contrast to these hilly, switch-back roads running inland from the north to the south may be compared that running from Rome to Naples, not the route usually followed via Vallombrosa and Frosinone, but that via Velletri, Terracina and Gaeta. Here the highroad is nearly flat, though truth to tell of none too good surface, all the way to Naples. Practically it is as good a road as that which runs inland and offers to any who choose to pass that way certain delights that most other travellers in Italy know not of.

At Cisterna di Roma, forty-eight kilometres from Rome, one is in the midst of the Pontine Marshes it is true, and it is also more or less of a marvel that a decent road could have been built here at all. From this point of view it is interesting to the automobilist who has a hobby of studying the road-building systems of the countries through which he travels. Of the Pontine Marshes themselves it is certain that they are not salubrious, and malaria is most prevalent near them. Appius Claudius, in 312 B. C., tried to drain the marsh and so did Cæsar, Augustus and Theodoric after him, and the Popes Boniface VIII, Martinus V and Sixtus V, but the morass is still there in spite of the fact that a company calling itself Ufficio della Bonificazione delle Paludi Pontine is to-day working continuously at the same problem.

Putting these various classes of Italian roads aside for the moment there remains but one other variety to consider, that of the mountain roads of the high Alpine valleys and those crossing the Oberland and, further east, those in communication with the Austrian Tyrol. On the west these converge on Milan and Turin via the region of the lakes and the valleys of Aosta and Susa, and in the centre and east give communication from Brescia, Verona and Venice with West Germany and Austria.

These are the best planned and best kept roads in Italy, take them by and large. The most celebrated are those leading from Turin into France; via Susa and the Col du Mont Genevre to Briançon, and via Mont Cenis to Modane and Grenoble; via the Val d’Aosta and the Petit Saint Bernard to Albertville in France, or via the Grand Saint Bernard to Switzerland.

Just north of the Lago di Maggiore, accessible either from Como or from Milan direct via Arona, is the famous road over the Simplon Pass, at an elevation of 2,008 metres above the sea. By this road, the best road in all Italy, without question, one enters or leaves the kingdom by the gateway of Domodossola.

On entering Italy by this route one passes the last rock-cut gallery near Crevola and, by a high-built viaduct, thirty metres or more above the bed of the river, it crosses the Diveria. Soon the vineyards and all the signs of the insect life of the southland meet the eye. Italy has at last been reached, no more eternal snow and ice, no more peaked rooftops, the whole region now flattens out into the Lombard plain. Domodossola has all the ear-marks of the Italian’s manner of life and building of houses, albeit that the town itself has no splendid monuments.

Another entrance to the Italian lake region through the mountain barrier beyond is by the road over the San Bernardino Pass and Bellinzona. The San Bernardino Pass is not to be confounded with those of the Grand and Petit Saint Bernard. The present roadway dates from 1822, when it was built by the engineer Pocobelle, at the joint expense of the Sardinian and Grisons governments. Its chief object was to connect Genoa and Turin directly with Switzerland and west Germany. The pass crosses the Rheinwald at a height of 2,063 metres.

This passage across the Alps was known to the ancient Romans, and down to the fifteenth century it was known as the Vogelberg. A mission brother, Bernardino of Siena, preaching the gospel in the high valleys, erected a chapel here which gave the pass the name which it bears to-day.

In part the road tunnels through the hillsides, in part runs along a shelf beside the precipice, and here and there crosses a mountain torrent by some massive bridge of masonry.

Like most of the mountain roads leading into Italy from Switzerland and Germany the southern slope descends more abruptly than that on the north. The coach driver may trot his horses down hill, though, so well has the descent been engineered, and the automobilist may rush things with considerably more safety here than on the better known routes.

Another celebrated gateway into Italy is that over the Splugen Pass from Coire (in Italian nomenclature: Colmo dell’Orso). It was completed by the Austrian government in 1823 to compete with the new-made road a few kilometres to the west over the Bernardino which favoured Switzerland and Germany and took no consideration whatever of the interests of Austria. The summit of the Splugen Pass is 2,117 metres above sea-level and on a narrow ridge near by runs for six kilometres the boundary between Switzerland and Italy.

Entering Italy by the Splugen Pass one finds the dogana a dull, ugly group of buildings just below the first series of facets which drop down from the crest. It is as lonesome and gloomy a place of residence as one can possibly conceive as existing on the earth’s surface. One forgets entirely that it is very nearly the heart of civilized Europe; there is nothing within view to suggest it in the least, not a scrap of vegetation, not a silvery streak of water, not a habitation even that might not be as appropriately set upon a shelf of rock by the side of Hecla.

The French army under Maréchal Macdonald crossed the pass in 1800 when but a mere trail existed, but with a loss of a hundred men and as many horses.

Of late years the passage of the Col has been rendered the easier by the cutting of two long galleries. Another engineering work of note is met a little farther on in the Gorge of San Giacomo, a work completed by Carlo Donegani in the reign of the Emperor Francis II, and, just beyond, the boiling torrent of the Liro is spanned by a daring bridge of masonry.

Road signs in Italy are not as good or as frequent as one finds in France, but where they exist they are at least serviceable. The Roman milestone of old has ceased to serve its purpose, though solitary examples still exist, and their place is taken by the governmental “bornes” and the placards posted at the initiation of the Touring Club and various automobile organizations in certain parts, particularly in the north.

The signboards of the Touring Club Italiano are distinctly good as far as they go, but they are infrequent.

All hotels and garages affiliated with the club hang out a characteristic and ever welcome sign, and there one is sure of finding the best welcome and the best accommodations for man and his modern beast of burden, the mechanical horses of iron and bronze harnessed to his luxurious tonneau or limousine.

With regard to road maps for Italy there exist certain governmental maps like those of the Ordnance Survey in England or of the État Major in France, but they are practically useless for the automobilist, and are only interesting from a topographic sense.

Taride, the French map publisher, issues a cheap series of Italian road maps, covering the entire peninsula in three sheets printed in three colours, with main roads marked plainly in red. They are easily read and clear and have the advantage of being cheap, the three sheets costing but a franc each, but one suspects that they were not composed entirely from first hand, well-authenticated, recent sources of information. Little discrepancies such as just where a railway crosses a road, etc., etc., are frequently to be noted. This is perhaps a small matter, but the genuine vagabond tourist, whether he is plodding along on foot or rolling smoothly on his five inch pneumatics, likes to know his exact whereabouts at every step of the way. On the whole the Italian “Taride” maps are fairly satisfactory, and they are much more easily read than the more elaborate series in fifty-six sheets on a scale of 1-1,250,000 issued by the Touring Club Italiano, or the thirty-five sheets of the Carta Stradale d’Italia Sistema Becherel-Marieni, which by reason of the number of sheets alone are in no way as convenient as the three sheet map.

The Becherel-Marieni maps are, however, beautifully printed and have a system of marking localities where one finds supplies of gasoline, a mechanician or a garage which is very useful to the automobilist, besides giving warning of all hills and, with some attempt at precision, also marking the good, mediocre and bad roads. This is important but, as the writer has so often found that a good road of yesterday has become a bad road of to-day, and will be perhaps a worse one to-morrow, he realizes that the fluctuating quality of Italian roads prevents any genius of a map-maker from doing his best. These maps in seven colours are perhaps the best works of their kind in Italy, at least ranking with the Touring Club maps, and completely cover the country, whereas the other series is not as yet wholly complete.

Membership in the great Touring Club Italiano is almost a necessity for one who would enjoy his Italian tour to the full. The “Annuario,” giving information as to hotels and garages and miniature plans of all the cities and principal towns – presented gratis to members – is all but indispensable, while the three pocket volumes entitled Strade di Grande Communicazione, with the kilometric distances between all Italian places except the merest hamlets and the profile elevations (miniature maps, hundreds of them) of the great highways are a boon and a blessing to one who would know the easiest and least hilly road between two points. The accompanying diagram explains this better than words.