Il treno

The unification of Italy was a process, not an event, but when the Kingdom of Italy was declared in 1861, one of the tasks that the new government of Victor Emanuel embarked upon was the expansion and connection of the new nation's railway network. By 1870, railroads had reached from Milan to Levanto, the next town up the coast from Monterosso, and from Florence (Firenze) by way of Pisa to La Spezia, down the coast from Riomaggiore, and work had already begun on the Cinque Terre coast in between. Owing to the rough Appenine terrain, crews had to tunnel through miles of rock; the line was completed at enormous cost in both money and lives. (Two parallel lines, actually, with trains running in both directions.)

[Most of this stonework and masonry dates back to the 1860s and 1870s. Note the yellow-legged gulls ("king gulls") below.]

[A view from the sea. From inside the train, you get a few seconds of scenic Mediterranean glare before plunging back into the darkness of the tunnel.]

The coming of the railroad to the Cinque Terre ended, to a certain extent, its isolation from the rest of Italy, and facilitated travel between its component villages. It remains the easiest way to travel between villages, far less susceptible to the vagaries of weather than the alternatives of boat or shoe leather, and we relied on it to get both to and around the Five Lands. Even when we weren't riding, we noted the regional trains dropping off another group of tourists, the fast intercity trains passing through without stopping, their comings and goings an informal way of noting the time as we passed our days, and their modernity in odd harmony with the medieval villages.

While in-country, we rode both the national railway, Trenitalia, and regional line Trenord. Assuming these to be typical of Italian rail travel as a whole, I offer these general observations: Rolling stock is incredibly varied, with some equipment dating (based on appearances, at any rate) back to the 1950s or 1960s, and some of very recent manufacture; each individual train seems to be comprised of matching engines and carriages, but the next train down the line is likely to be entirely different from the first. Seemingly the only unifying feature is that all rolling stock, new as well as old, has been tagged by graffitists. Stations, and especially railway sidings, are apt to be weedy and a bit run-down looking, with most buildings bearing their own graffiti. (Stations in the Cinque Terre, probably because they lie within the national park, tend to be neater.) But first impressions, in this case, are deceiving. The trains are comfortable—all of our carriages were air-conditioned, and we had no complaints even when riding economy—and seem to run on time. Personnel both aboard the trains and at the stations were friendly and helpful, and I look back fondly on our journeys as an integral part of our holiday. (We certainly had more favourable impression of Trenitalia than of British Airways!)

The End.