The Messina Bridge Dream Revived, and the Questions It Raises for Italy's Ports

For more than 2,000 years, it has been an obsessive dream: a plan to link the Mediterranean's largest island to mainland Italy. It began with the Romans, and now officials have revived it, according to a Guardian report published on Saturday.

The bridge over the Strait of Messina, separating Sicily from Calabria, has been proposed and abandoned repeatedly over the centuries. The Guardian reports that the latest revival has drawn claims that the project is unworkable and protests from locals.

For Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the debate over the bridge is more than a distant southern affair. It touches on the question of how Italy allocates its transport infrastructure spending, and where the country's ports fit in the wider European logistics network.