14 June 1974: the A3 motorway opens, now you can go from Salerno to Reggio Calabria

OfGabriele Bojano

It took 12 years to complete the last stretch of a work that cost 368 billion lire and which Fanfani defined as “the great road of traffic and work”

It’s the big daySalerno-Reggio Calabria motorway: in the aftermath of an inaugural ceremony with great pomp which sees the participation of the highest officials of the State, the first cars begin to travel along the A3 in the last stretch, the one that connects Salerno to Reggio Calabria passing through Cosenza, Lamezia Terme and Vibo Valentia. The first stretch of this important road artery, the one up to Pompeii, had been completed in 1929; the second stretch, which connects Pompeii in Salernowhich was completed on 16 July 1961.

The works of the last section began on 21 January 1962 in Montevergine (Reggio Calabria) in the presence of the Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani who, in the ceremony of laying the first stone in which he predicted that the infrastructure would be completed within three years, placed a plaque that reads: «After 21st centuries the path that Rome opened to unite the people of Southern Italy reopens today on the ancient footsteps from Salerno to Reggio Calabria to continue and complete the great route of traffic and work between the North and the South of Italy”. The motorway was opened for operation between Salerno and Lagonegro only in 1967, the following year it reached Cosenza and in 1969 it reached Gioia Tauro. In 1972 a landslide near Lagonegro damaged the Taggine and Sirino viaducts; this causes the closure of part of the motorway and the opening of a detour. In 1974 the motorway finally reaches Reggio Calabria.

The 432,660 kilometer long highway crosses the three southern regions of Campania, Basilicata and Calabria and it has two lanes for each direction, without emergency lanes and with only lay-bys spaced apart from each other. The final cost is calculated in 368 billion lire. From 1997 to 2016, numerous modernization and expansion projects followed one another which, despite the truly tormented history of endless construction sites and infiltrations into the procurement of Camorra organisations, designed the new and modern face of an infrastructure now renamed A2 – Mediterranean Motorway.

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