The Railway. Dynamics and Processes of Territorial Transformation in Calabria

Abstract

The first concrete initiative aimed to remove Calabria from its secular isolation was the construction of the railway along the Ionian side, beginning in 1866, followed by the Tyrrhenian side twenty years later, during which connections with the North of Italy was however guaranteed, not by the post road, but rather by the coastal routes through Reggio, Scilla, Pizzo and Scalea, also preferred by travellers of past centuries. The Calabrian coast, in this way, was marked by the railway line, with radical consequences on the perception of the landscape: both costal railway lines became a formidable instrument of observation of uncontaminated nature for the Calabrian people themselves: a crown of hill town centres overlooking rocky ridges and empty beaches. In the following decades, some internal connecting railway lines were built. Today, few stretches offer the only surviving possibility of enjoying the original sense of the journey on the railway tracks of Calabria, unlike the widespread degradation which affects the coastal lines, resulting from uncontrolled urbanization phenomena occurred from the 1950s.