3-021-254 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

New overland route to India: Mont Cenis Railway - Susa, in Piedmont, 1869. Engraving from a sketch '...by our Special Artist who has been commissioned to go along the whole line of the New Overland Route and the Suez Canal...[The illustration shows] the picturesque ancient town of Susa, the first Italian town to which the traveller comes from France. It is the north-western terminus of the Italian railway system. Here the Alta-Italia line runs about thirty miles to Turin...The situation of Susa, at the entrance of the mountain gorge, and on the banks of the Dora, which flows into the Po at Turin, is very striking; but the town is poor and decayed. The principal object of antiquity is the Arch of Caesar, in marble. It is of the Corinthian order, and has suffered but little from time...It has evidently been intended as a gate to the castle, which is seen behind the arch. The castle of Susa retains little of what must have been its grandeur in former times...the place has been many times destroyed; indeed, ruins are plentiful enough on the heights around...The railway to the Mont Cenis tunnel leaves the present line from Turin to Susa a few miles below the town, and goes to Bardonnèche'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.