Today marks the 71st anniversary of the opening of the first metro in Italy: Metro B in Rome. Originally designed in the 1930s, its construction was postponed several times due to the Second World War, finally being inaugurated on 9 February 1955.
The first real metropolitan line of the Peninsula was therefore built in the capital, although in Naples an underground railway service called “metropolitana FS” had been active since 1925. From a technical point of view, however, Rome’s Metro B is the first to meet all the infrastructural criteria to be considered such.
As anticipated, the first projects relating to Rome’s Metro B date back to the 1930s. In those years, power was in the hands of the fascist regime and the Duce’s objective was to connect Termini station with the new E42 district (now the EUR district) which, a few years later, was supposed to host the Universal Exhibition. Precisely for this reason the initial name of the metro was E42 railway.
The arrival of the war, however, shuffled the cards on the table and the priorities soon changed: for this reason the works were interrupted and those few tunnels already built were used by the population as anti-aircraft shelters.
In 1948, three years after the end of the conflict, work resumed and the work was completed only in 1955. The result was a line approximately 11.3 km long with 10 stops along the main points of interest in the city, such as Termini Station, the Colosseum, the Basilica of San Paolo and the Magliana district. The official inauguration was held on 9 February 1955 in the presence of the President of the Republic Luigi Einaudi and the cardinal vicar of Rome Clemente Micara, while the opening to the public was set for the following day.
An interesting aspect is that at the time it was simply called “Metropolitana”: the name Line B was established only in 1980, after the opening of line A.
In any case, although Line B may seem ancient to us, it is good to consider the date of its opening in the right perspective. In fact, if we look at the situation outside national borders we see how in New York the first subway was inaugurated in 1904 while in London as early as 1863. Italy therefore, also due to the War, obtained its first subway almost a century later than other countries.
