History
The first stretch of the road to be completed was the Naples-Pompeii, finished on 22 June 1929. The connection to Salerno was completed on 16 July 1961.
In 1964 the Italian government decided to build a motorway which connected the rest of Italy to Calabria, so far considered a kind of "Third Island" (together with Sicily and Sardinia), due to the nature of its sharp reliefs, which made it problematic to reach the region. The new motorway was built in a total of 8 years, the works being delivered on 13 June 1974.
The road built was more similar to a sub-standard freeway (Italian: strada statale, "state road") than to the other autostrade (motorways) in Italy. Queues became a common feature, especially in summer. To solve the situation, the Italian government funded renovation works in 1997. As of 2010, many of them are still ongoing, despite in 1993 it had been announced that the works would be completed within 2003
Read more about this topic: Autostrada A3 (Italy)
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