(July 10, 2017) On the occasion of the 160th anniversary of the opening of the railway line connecting Ljubljana and Trieste, inaugurated on July 27, 1857, the Italian Cultural Institute of Ljubljana organized the exhibition "The Ljubljana - Trieste railway 160° Anniversary", curated by Alessandro Puhali and realized by the UPT - Popular University of Trieste, where documentary materials are collected from the collection of Stelio and Tity Davia. The exhibition will be inaugurated on Wednesday, July 12 and will remain open to the public until September 8. At the same time, a second section of the exhibition will be available at the headquarters of the Italian Community of Koper "Santorio Santorio", starting from July 26. The inauguration of the railway ended the extraordinary completion of the wider Southern Railway, which allowed to reach Trieste from Vienna. The Ljubljana - Trieste section, whose work lasted between 1850 and 1857, required demanding realizations such as the great dike on the Ljubljana marsh, the dazzling viaducts of Borovnica (destroyed during World War II), Aurisina and Barcola, robust anti-boring and aqueduct systems for refueling the Karstic stations. In Trieste, then, a station was built, one of the biggest in Europe, functionally linked to the port facilities, according to a far-reaching logic of train-ship intermodality. (Ram)

ABOUT / THE SOUTHERN RAILWAY

With the inauguration of the Kras Railway by Emperor Francesco Giuseppe, the construction of the Southern Railway was completed, the longest among those built in the mid-nineteenth century with its 577 km dual track. Meanwhile, however, the Hapsburg Empire, which had been so busy in the realization of this great business, had been hit by a severe financial crisis and therefore forced to undertake a forced privatization of the rail sector. In 1858, the Vienna-Trieste railway was sold for a ninety-year concession to a Society formed by the Rothschild bankers with the assistance of financiers of different nationalities, assuming the name "Imperial Royal Private Company of the State Southern Railways, Lombardy-Venetian Railways and Central Italy Railways ".