In Italy in the 1960s, announcements about a state-of-the-art highway that would soon connect the economically struggling south with the advanced north were as pompous as the scale of the project. Except that it took over 60 years to realize, and its name (Tirrenica) became synonymous with the areas it would connect – from the outskirts of Naples to Salerno – for all the wrong reasons, while also exposing the structural pathologies of the Italian state like no other, effectively confirming the narrative of a “country of two speeds.”