The Autostrada A24, or Autostrada dei Parchi (“Parks Motorway”), is a

motorway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms i ...

connecting

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

Teramo Teramo (; nap, label= Abruzzese, Tèreme ) is a city and ''comune'' in the Italian region of Abruzzo, the capital of the province of Teramo. The city, from Rome, is situated between the highest mountains of the Apennines (Gran Sasso d'Italia) ...

. Starting at the

Grande Raccordo Anulare The GRA or Grande Raccordo Anulare (literally, "Great Ring Junction") is a toll-free, ring-shaped long orbital motorway that encircles Rome. GRA is one of the most important roads in Rome, and traffic reaches 160,000 vehicles per day as of 201 ...

(GRA - the Rome orbital motorway), the A24 runs broadly north-east past

L'Aquila L'Aquila ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in central Italy. It is the capital city of both the Abruzzo region and of the Province of L'Aquila. , it has a population of 70,967 inhabitants. Laid out within medieval walls on a hill in the wide valle ...

and through a 10 km

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

under the

Gran Sasso Gran Sasso d'Italia (; ) is a massif in the Apennine Mountains of Italy. Its highest peak, Corno Grande (2,912 metres), is the highest mountain in the Apennines, and the second-highest mountain in Italy outside the Alps. The mountain lies wit ...

before reaching

. It is constructed in an almost completely hilly and mountainous territory with a complex orography. For this reason, the motorway required the adoption of daring civil engineering solutions, with extensive stretches utilising viaducts and 42 tunnels (four of which are longer than 4 km) including the double tunnel of the Gran Sasso, whose length (10.174 km for the northern tunnel, 10.175 km the southern) made it the longest double-tube road tunnel in Europe, as well as the longest road tunnel in Italy entirely in the national territory. First planned in 1973 to connect

Lazio it, Laziale , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

and

Abruzzo Abruzzo (, , ; nap, label=Neapolitan language, Abruzzese Neapolitan, Abbrùzze , ''Abbrìzze'' or ''Abbrèzze'' ; nap, label=Sabino dialect, Aquilano, Abbrùzzu; #History, historically Abruzzi) is a Regions of Italy, region of Southern Italy wi ...

as well as the

Autostrada del Sole The Autostrade (; singular ) are roads forming the Italian national system of motorways. The total length of the system is about . In North and Central Italy, the Autostrade mainly consists of tollways managed by Autostrade per l'Italia, a ho ...

and the Autostrada Adriatica, the route currently finishes at

, with the remainder of the distance to the Adriatic Sea still under construction. The highway includes two long tunnels under the

massif, running roughly on a south west/north east axis, with each tunnel just over 6.3 miles in length. A third tunnel, dug adjacent to the two highway tunnels, houses the

Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) is the largest underground research center in the world. Situated below Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, it is well known for particle physics research by the INFN. In addition to a surface portion of the ...

(National Laboratories of the Gran Sasso), the largest underground particle physics laboratory in the world. Together with the A25, it fulfilled the need to provide a fast and reliable connection between the capital and the central-eastern regions of the peninsula; until then, the natural subdivision imposed by the highest peaks of the Apennines had made travel between the two seas difficult, slow and treacherous. The A24 reduced the isolation of Abruzzo from the Tyrrhenian regions, and together with the A25 became the main link between the Tyrrhenian and the Adriatic in central Italy. Until its completion, communications took place mainly via

Salaria ''Salaria'' is a genus of fish in the family Blenniidae. It now contains marine species which are found around the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Freshwater species were reallocated to '' Salariopsis'' in 2022. One species, ...

, Flaminia and Tiburtina Valeria. Due to the particular infrastructure in place (viaducts and tunnels), the hilly-mountain environment and necessary maintenance, it has one of the highest tolls of motorways in Italy. , The route is currently managed by Strada dei Parchi S.p.A..

Route

See also

References

External links