Eight years on, Genoa's reckoning with infrastructure neglect

On Thursday, an Italian court sentenced Giovanni Castellucci, former chief executive of Autostrade, to twelve years in prison for his role in the 2018 collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa. Thirty-two defendants in total were convicted; twenty-five others were acquitted or cleared. The Guardian and France 24 have both noted that the trial highlights a broader crisis in Italy's ageing infrastructure — a theme that recurs in how the world reports the country.

The bridge did not fail by accident. According to France 24's coverage, the disaster was the result of negligence and deferred maintenance across a system that Italy has allowed to deteriorate. The convictions are a form of accountability, but they do not rebuild what was lost: forty-three lives, and the confidence that the roads and bridges ordinary Italians cross each day are safe. The world's press has framed this not as an isolated tragedy but as a symptom of a country that has spent decades underinvesting in the infrastructure that holds it together.

What the international coverage makes clear is that Genoa's bridge was not unique. Italy's motorways, railways, viaducts and tunnels are among Europe's oldest and most heavily used. The cost of bringing them to modern safety standards is immense, and the political will to fund that work — especially when it competes with pensions, healthcare and debt service — has been weak. The trial's conclusion does not close this question; it merely names those who were responsible for one catastrophic failure.

We are left with a paradox that defines much of how the world sees Italy: a country of extraordinary technical skill and engineering heritage, yet one that struggles to maintain what its ancestors built. The convictions are just. But they are also a reminder that Italy's future depends less on prosecuting the past than on finding the resources and political consensus to repair the present.