From the Flaminia to the Strada delle Ferriere, a journey to discover the roads of Valnerina.
Since time immemorial, due to its geographical centrality, Valnerina has had a strategic role of great importance in the road system of ancient Italy: it is no coincidence that the millenary function of the Flaminia consular road is known – to historians and non-historians – still today an artery extremely used by those who find themselves passing through the green heart of Italy. «Between the 7th and 9th centuries» writes Antonella Manni in the essay entitled From ancient routes to contemporary road system «the eastern branch of the Flaminia became the connecting axis between Spoleto and the territories of the Duchy», to underline the historical and socio-economic importance of this ancient walkway. Centuries later, in 1634 to be precise, Pope Urban VIII, urged by the pressure of Cardinal Fausto Poli – a native of Usigni and intimately linked to Poggiodomo and Valnerina – authorized the construction of a new road, located between the Flaminia and Monteleone di Spoleto, which would facilitate the transit of iron materials extracted from deposits of which the Corno Valley, bordering the Province of Rieti, was extremely rich. At the beginning of the 19th century, the road desired by Urban VIII was reduced to little more than a mule track.

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Pietro Ferrari and a project to be realized
During the Napoleonic domination, to meet the needs of the nascent bourgeoisie, the Spoleto engineer-architect Pietro Ferrari created an extremely innovative infrastructure project that included the construction of a new road artery connecting Spoleto, Norcia and Ascoli Piceno and which, at the same time, strengthened the existing routes. It is no coincidence that in an archive document from 1823 we read: “All provincial roads are suitable for vehicles, only this one in Norcia is dangerous even on horseback”. However, despite the countless protests of the Municipal Commission of Norcia, it was necessary to wait over twenty years to see the Nursina provincial road built: it was the year 1856. Years later, the need for greater speed in connections with Norcia, led the administrators of Spoleto to look for alternative solutions to the stagecoaches that traveled far and wide through the Valnerina. Thus, on October 12, 1902, the first steam-powered automobile service was inaugurated, later replaced by gasoline-powered vehicles.
On the tracks of history, the Spoleto-Norcia Railway becomes reality
Given the slowness and exorbitant costs of the automobile service, starting in the early twentieth century the idea of ​​a railway that would facilitate connections between Spoleto and Norcia took shape. The original project was drawn up by engineer Carosso in 1909 and envisaged the construction of a railway that would stop in Eggi and then reach Grotti passing through a tunnel located in Forca di Cerro. In an attempt to simplify its construction by reducing costs and timescales, the executive project was entrusted to Erwin Thomann, who had already designed the famous Swiss Lotschberg railway. The construction site of the Spoleto Norcia Railway was officially inaugurated in 1913 and was then interrupted by the bombings of the First World War: the project, definitively completed in 1926, earned the picturesque railway the charming nickname of the Little Gotthard of Umbria.

When industrial archaeology becomes a greenway
In 1968, the significant post-war development of private motorization and road transport, which were more competitive than rail travel, led to the suppression of the railway. The old Spoleto station from which the blue locomotive departed, which became an icon of Valnerina in the post-war period, has been transformed into an evocative museum space where it is possible to retrace the stages that allowed the creation of this extraordinary work, an example of industrial archaeology today reinterpreted as a greenway and made available to new travellers.

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