On May 21, 1955 the multi-year programme of a highway plan was launched in Italy. The programme
included the Autostrada del Sole as guideline and a series of other highways, to be built afterwards, which
would connect all Italian cities.
The designer who was assigned the entire highway plan was Francesco Aimone Jelmoni.
Jelmoni was born in Milan on September 10, 1910; he graduated with honors from the Polytechnic and
subsequently specialized in road engineering and reinforced concrete.
He later became a professor both at the Catholic University of Milan and at the Polytechnic, where he
became the manager of the Institute of roads and transportations.
His academic activity was matched with an intense and significant professional life which made him the
main actor of the infrastructural history of Italy.
Certainly, the most significant example is the Autostrada del Sole; from Milan to Rome for 553 km and
then from Rome to Naples for another 202 km. Jelmoni is acknowledged as the great creator and designer
of this big artery, which began in 1956 and was completed in 1964. At first (in 1952) he worked in support
of SISI ("Italian Road Initiatives Development JSC", the company specifically created by Fiat, Pirelli,
Italcementi and ENI to study the construction of the A1) and then (in 1955), he worked for the Institute
for the industrial reconstruction (IRI) with Italstrade JSC. This second time there was a completely
different management capacity compared to ANAS, the company which had previously been entrusted
with the construction of the Genova - Savona highway, that project had been a sort of general rehearsal
for the organization of the construction site for the Autostrada, that unfortunately turned out to be a
fiasco.
In order to guarantee maintenance sustainability, he came up with a two-lane road (one per direction)
that would resemble the American model of toll highways.
The project required a knowledge of the Italian territory that was not available at the time; for this reason
Jelmoni did his best to cover the entire route on foot, in order to understand exactly what the best track
would be and where it would be necessary to build bridges. In this way, he designed a large-scale
(1:25000) layout on paper, a "base that is safe enough to give the idea a sufficiently reliable
concreteness".
To carry out the project, Jelmoni together with Fedele Cova - CEO of the Autostrade Company - divided
the entire route into lots of 3-4 km; for each of these sections he stored all the documentation of the
preliminary design in special boxes. Thanks to these precious testimonies, we can have, to date, an idea of
what the construction plan was like: to divide the project into small lots so that every small local business
could have the opportunity to participate - the Autostrade Company took over the works only in cases of
particularly complex constructions.
Thanks to this initiative, the entire Italian territory was involved in the project.
Dividing the project implied a variety of techniques, materials, qualities and, above all, designs; unlike
what Jelmoni had thought about, which was parabolic concrete arches for all the crossings, the final result
ended up being extremely original and detailed. In fact, each designer did not miss the cache to build his
own bridge for the highway.
In the end, this extraordinary work will prove to be the product of the techniques and creativity of Italy’s
best engineers of that time, who, in any case, managed to ensure a strict observance of the schedule and
the funds used.
Therefore, by designing the Autostrada del Sole, Francesco Aimone Jelmoni is considered "the man who
brought Italy closer together".
For his decisive role in this project, in 1965 he was awarded the Christopher Columbus international
communication prize. Awarded for the first time to an Italian researcher, it was like being awarded a
Nobel prize for transport.
Jelmoni also designed and built other highways, characterized by an advanced technical concept.
Many are the works he designed, especially track ideas where he excelled for design sensitivity and
creativity, and also many are the initiatives he supported that have not been carried out.
Francesco Aimone Jelmoni died in Milan on July 24, 1991.