We’ve all heard of the great Amer­i­can road trip. In the event you’ve ever dreamt of tak­ing an amazing Ital­ian highway journey, you’ve positive­ly come throughout this inevitable hitch within the plan: you may’t dri­ve to Sici­ly. You may, after all, put your automobile on a fer­ry; you may even take a practice that will get placed on a fer­ry, the final of its sort in Europe. However a stretch of highway span­ning the unstable Strait of Messi­na, which sep­a­charges Sici­ly from the primary­land, has been a dream deferred since antiq­ui­ty, when Pliny the Elder wrote of Roman notions of construct­ing a float­ing bridge — which, with its poten­tial to dis­rupt the water­method’s con­sid­er­in a position north-south commerce, was even­tu­al­ly scrapped.

Plainly Ital­ians have been jok­ing in regards to the impos­si­bil­i­ty of a bridge to Sici­ly ever since. These two movies from Get to the Point and The B1M clarify the his­to­ry of this con­tin­u­al­ly frus­trat­ed infra­struc­tur­al venture, and the polit­i­cal maneu­vers which have latest­ly begun to make it appear very close to­ly semi-pos­si­ble.

Although the ocean mon­sters Scyl­la and Charyb­dis of which Homer sung might not be a risk, the chal­lenges are nonetheless many and var­ied, from the depth of the strait and the area­al seis­mic activ­i­ty that may neces­si­tate construct­ing the biggest sin­gle-span bridge on the planet to the inter­fer­ence of native mafia teams who make their liv­ing by dri­ving up the prices of con­struc­tion works whereas additionally mak­ing positive that they’re nev­er com­plet­ed.

Two years in the past, the gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Gior­gia Mel­oni accredited a decree to professional­ceed with con­struc­tion, however whether or not it would actual­ize its professional­ject­ed com­ple­tion by 2032 is any­physique’s guess. The very concept of such a struc­ture has such cul­tur­al res­o­nance that its exis­tence — in addition to its col­lapse — was envi­sioned to nice impact within the latest Ital­ian crime dra­ma The Unhealthy Man. Although crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed, that collection was additionally con­demned in some polit­i­cal quar­ters for per­pet­u­at­ing neg­a­tive stereo­forms of the coun­strive: stereo­sorts that might poten­tial­ly be refut­ed by get­ting some ambi­tious new infra­struc­ture fin­ished. If Italy can get the Strait of Messi­na Bridge constructed, in spite of everything, what may­n’t it do?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bril­liant Engi­neer­ing That Made Venice: How a City Was Built on Water

Watch Venice’s New $7 Bil­lion Flood Defense Sys­tem in Action

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still With­stand the Weight of Mod­ern Cars & Trucks

Why Europe Has So Few Sky­scrap­ers

Rome’s Colos­se­um Will Get a New Retractable Floor by 2023 — Just as It Had in Ancient Times

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.