History
The first railway in Italy was the Napoli-Portici line, built in 1839 to connect the royal palace of Naples to the seaside. After the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, a project was started to build a network from the Alps to Sicily, in order to connect the country.
The first high speed train was the Italian ETR 200 which in July 1939 went from Milan to Florence at 165 km/h (103 mph), with a top speed of 203 km/h (126 mph). With this service, the railway was able to compete with the upcoming airplanes. The Second World War stopped these services.
After the Second World War, Italy started to repair the damaged railways, and built nearly 20,000 km (12,000 mi) of new tracks.
Nowadays the rail tracks and infrastructure are managed by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI), while the train and the passenger section is managed mostly by Trenitalia. Both are Ferrovie dello Stato (FS) subsidiaries, once the only train operator in Italy.
Read more about this topic: Rail Transport In Italy
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