3-034-677 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Opening of the Mont Cenis Tunnel: illuminations at Turin representing the tunnel, 1871. Celebrating the opening of the Fréjus Rail Tunnel in the European Alps, linking Bardonecchia in Italy to Modane in France. View of 'a grand feature of the festive illuminations which were prepared in the city of Turin, on the evening of Sunday, the 17th September, to celebrate the opening of the tunnel. In the wide thoroughfare called the Corso del Rè, which is like the Boulevards of a French town, and which is close to the railway station, an immensely prolonged series of arches, constructed of metal pipes, thickly set with gas-burners, had been set up in such an array as to represent, in fire, the shape of the tunnel viewed from one of its entrances, with a vista that seemed to be of infinite extent. This contrivance, like most of the other devices in fanciful illumination, which were to be admired in different streets and piazzas of Turin, was the design and workmanship of an artificer named Ottino, dwelling in that city, whose ingenuity has long been famed throughout the kingdom of Italy'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.