3-034-676 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Opening of the Mont Cenis Tunnel: mouth of the tunnel at Bardonnèche, Piedmont, [Italy], 1871. Steam locomotive emerging from the Fréjus Rail Tunnel - 3.7 km (8.5 miles) in length - in the European Alps, linking Bardonecchia in Italy to Modane in France: '...the great railway tunnel...through the Alps at the Col de Frejus, near Mont Cenis, by which France and Italy are now put in direct railway communication with each other...The Mont Cenis Tunnel, as it is still called, from Modane, in Savoy, to Bardonnéche, in Piedmont, bored through seven miles and a half thickness of mountain,...by the science and skill of native engineers and the labour of native workmen, since 1857, was formally opened on Sunday week...The first special train, at half-past ten o'clock, conveyed the Italian Ministers of State, the Syndic or Mayor of Turin, and other high official personages, to meet the French Minister of Commerce, M. Victor Lefranc, M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, and other distinguished Frenchmen, at Modane'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.