Rails in the Car Kingdom

The success of car culture and infrastructure has somehow eclipsed all other mobility histories of the twentieth century. ¹ The car’s success was so rapid and enthusiastically supported that it has often been presented as unavoidable. ² In Italy, as elsewhere, the automobile was a status symbol and an extraordinary tool for freedom, able to carry people free from train timetables and railway tracks. Meanwhile, summer saw the perfect match between mass motorisation and paid holidays, as – as Italo Calvino wrote in his novel La speculazione edilizia (A Plunge into Real Estate) – Italians drove en masse to domestic beaches. In Italy, as in several other Western countries, car ownership and paid holidays became the pillars of social compromise after the Second World War. ³