Anyone who has read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez cannot forget it, one of the novels with the most unexpected plot and the book that marked the golden age of mystical South American literature.
Everything repeats itself after a hundred years and we find ourselves back at the starting point, after having gone round in circles that resembles a roller coaster ride.
And so, it finally happened in Colleferro with the reopening of the famous Via Romana that from the gardens of Largo Oberdan (those of the square dedicated to Willy) leads directly to Via Casilina, leaving the train station on a side street.
The station is increasingly the heart of Colleferro, both because it enters the industrial area and for the numerous commuters who reach the capital every day.
The day dedicated to the patron saint Barbara in 2024 thus begins with one of the most anticipated moments in years: the reopening of the Via Romana closed for industrial safety reasons shortly before the Second World War.
In practice, in the 1930s, for security reasons given the presence of war industries, temporary closures of Via Romana began, separating the Scalo neighborhood from the rest of the town, from the administrative, educational and health center of Colleferro.
Colleferro, and therefore all the towns of the Lepini Mountains, are separated from the Via Casilina by the railway line and the Sacco River, so each new entrance must include the construction of at least two bridges. A problem of no small importance.
Then in the 1950s the factory committed to building the new road of Corso Garibaldi, the current entrance to Colleferro, with another bridge over the Sacco River and the railway, obtaining in exchange the integration of Via Romana within the industrial perimeter with two large gates at the two entrances.
The closure of the road created a real separation between the two neighborhoods and made it more difficult to reach the train station, despite the construction of a new viaduct to reconnect it with the center.
Years go by and Via Romana becomes almost an urban legend: every now and then someone says that Colleferro Scalo was attached to the center, every now and then someone brandishes the sword saying 'we will reopen Via Romana', but the memory was lost among normal people.
Even my mother-in-law, who was a nurse and had had a terrible accident with a train inside the factory, was totally skeptical about the possibility of retracing Via Romana.
But on the eve of the famous One Hundred Years, everything goes back to how it was before and today the famous Via Romana has reopened and now I am going to immediately walk it dedicating a thought to my mother-in-law, the nurse Maria of all the workers.
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