An exhibition to commemorate the 170 years since the inauguration of the railway line on which Italy was built: Turin-Genoa, created to connect the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia to its port on the Ligurian Sea, became the backbone of the economic development of united Italy for decades, then constituting one of the axes of growth and an extraordinary tool to connect the North-West territory to the rest of the country, but above all to the rich nations of continental Europe.

The story of this railway is not only a fundamental and fascinating chapter in our history: it is also an opportunity to reflect on the importance of connecting infrastructures in Europe at the beginning of the third millennium. Because truly along these tracks past and present touch each other to design our future.

The exhibition presents in summary form the enormous effort of an infrastructural nature, but also of an economic, political and administrative nature, which proved to be fundamental for the construction and consolidation of the line on which “Italy was really made”.

In addition to the panels that develop the individual sections, the exhibition features a table with touch screen technology, on which it will be possible to select and enlarge the 15 engravings that the Swiss painter Carlo Bossoli made in 1853 for a volume published in London (The Railway between Turin and Genoa), and also consult down to the smallest details a plan of the late nineteenth century that describes the technological equipment of the line.

It is also planned, and already in an advanced stage of execution, the creation of a dedicated website, on which all the contents that will be collected event after event will be brought together for the duration of the entire three-year period. The site includes sections dedicated, among other things, to the history of the line, to the contents of the individual exhibitions, to the materials produced in the various events, to the press review of the activity carried out.