The drill was actually not used directly for excavation, but to make the holes where the explosive could be placed for drilling and blasting. And here another key figure comes into play: Ascanio Sobrero, the discoverer of nitro-glycerine, which was used in these mountains. Sobrero also has his own street in town and, for good measure, even a plaque on one of the pillars of the porticoes of the Po St. close to the Academy of Medicine. The use of innovative machinery and the nitro-glycerine invented by Ascanio Sobrero were all elements of quick progress.
     Despite a stop in 1861 due to the transfer of Savoy from the Kingdom of Sardinia to France, the tunnel was completed ahead of schedule and was inaugurated on Christmas Day in 1870, no longer as national infrastructure, but as an international connection. The first train, the “Valigia delle Indie” i.e. the train which connected London to Brindisi, passed through the tunnel on January 5th 1872. When it was inaugurated, the Fréjus was the longest railway tunnel in the world and Turin became rapidly a record setting city in many areas of industry and production. Those were the days . . . Obviously the tunnel, which made it all possible, also deserves street naming: Fréjus St. in the Borgo San Paolo district carries its memory to this day.
     After a brilliant career and even a mineral compound labelled in his name, Angelo Sismonda, shaken by ill health and the death of his brother, died in Turin on December 30th 1878. It was said then that "Sismonda had made the mountains transparent". If you live in a place like Turin, which is surrounded 360° by the sight of high and awesome mountains, one day in your life you would wish a faraway horizon to appear by the magic of transparency, and imagine a world that exists nonetheless beyond the peaks, despite the limits imposed by our geography, and now even by politics.
     So where are we today? In a month or so, after nearly two years’ stop due to a big landslide on the other side, the trains to and from France will start running again through the tunnel, which we owe to Sismonda’s and his colleagues’ visionary obstinacy; we hope regularly, if not at high speed, the train will take us again to Paris!
     Sismonda, Sommeiller, Medail, Grattoni, Grandis, Sobrero, Paleocapa: perhaps no city in the world has engraved in its toponymical grid the names of all the architects of a large (and for that time unheard of) infrastructure. An epic undertaking was decisive for the economy of Piedmont and Italy as a whole, for its trade and development. We could argue that, without Sismonda, there would have been no FIAT Cinquecento, no Olivetti typewriters and no Nutella for the world to appreciate, as no entrepreneur would have dared to set up shop in a place which was rich with hydroelectricity, but isolated from the rest of world by the Alps.
     A monument in Piazza Statuto, the most esoteric square in Turin, inaugurated 135 years ago in 1890, celebrates the building of the tunnel, a monument studded with symbols that lend themselves to different interpretations: does it tell us the story of the defeat of the Titans, as it is supposed to do, or does it commemorate the 48 workers who lost their lives in the infrastructure building? Is it surmounted by a winged genie, like the one on the Mole Antonelliana (with a five-pointed star, which later disappeared) or is it Lucifer, signalling the gates of Hell?
     In any case, the names of the three engineers who built the tunnel are engraved on it: Sommeiller, Grattoni and Grandis.

     In this unusual case, perhaps unique, the toponymical force of Turin has done more than just registering names at random. All the protagonists of this adventure have a dedicated street right in the area close to the railway line: Sommeiller Ave. overpasses the railway tracks which start from the nearby station of Porta Nuova, Grandis and Grattoni gave their name to neighbouring streets close to Porta Susa, which was in the meantime made Turin’s main station, yet indefinitely waiting for a high speed train that indeed should have arrived a long time ago.
     Sooner or later the high-speed rail will connect Paris to Rome: even if this happens more than thirty years after its due time, we would like to be there alive, and see it. Another 150 years from now, I wonder what kind of record will be kept of those women and men, who created fetters and difficulties, thus actively contributing to making it next to impossible to secure a future of development in trade and tourism for this part of Europe and its citizens.
Rosalba Graglia and Marco Sorgetti