The rugged morphology of northern Italy has always constituted a challenge to the development of transport routes. Many Alpine passes, including the Little St Bernard, the Great St Bernard or the Montgenevre were already used in Roman times, but before the nineteenth century these roads were dangerous mule tracks, subject to floods, avalanches and landslides. Two factors played a decisive role in the revolution of transport from the early nineteenth century: technological innovations and the unification of previously independent states, with the consequent need for faster and more efficient connections. Many Alpine roads between Piedmont and France were improved in the Napoleonic period, particularly the Simplon, Mont Cenis and Montgenevre. In the same period the French administration promoted works in Liguria along the Riviera and through the Apennines, which were then completed by the Sardinian Kingdom.

The establishment of a modern road network was soon followed by the construction of the first railways: a railway between Genoa and Turin was opened in 1853, while the first Alpine railway tunnel, the Fréjus, between Bardonecchia and Modane, was inaugurated in 1871. The new roads and especially the railways significantly reduced time distances and travel costs in Liguria, as elsewhere; before the railway, travelling by coach from Genoa to Turin or Milan took twenty hours, while the same journey by train was five or six hours. Improved travelling conditions and reduced times were crucial for industrial development in the second half of the century, when many factories were established, often by foreign entrepreneurs. These elements of modernity in the landscape were frequently enthusiastically received by artists, who depicted features of roads, bridges, railways and factories.

Coastal Roads And Mountain Passes

Substantial improvements were made to road networks throughout much of Europe in the eighteenth century, but the Republic of Genoa retained a poor and rudimentary system lacking bridges and tunnels. The mule remained the principal means of land transport, while many long-distance journeys were made by sea (see Chapter 4). In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries those travelling from Genoa towards Tuscany usually sailed to La Spezia or Leghorn (Livorno) rather than take the coastal road, with its dangerous mountains and river crossings.