Il "Ponte Rotto"

I don't drive and the train has always been part of my life. It is a mode of transport on which I have relied since early age. 

The place where I lived in the 1950s/60s, had a railway that ran from the town of Porto Ceresio, on the Swiss border, to Milan stopping at various stations including Bisuschio, Atcisate, Induno Olona, Varese, Gallarate and Busto Arsizio.

The whole route became familiar to me in later years but up to the age of 12, my train journeys had been  from Arcisate to Porto Ceresio when my father, a keen angler, took me with him on fishing trips,I

Opposite Porto Ceresio station was an imbarcadero, a landing stage on the shores of Lake Lugano. We would embark on a boat that took us to Morcote or Melide in Switzerland where we tried to entice reluctant fish with juicy maggots and worms as baits.

The intended prey occasionally outwitted the fishermen by nibbling at the lure without getting hooked.

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After I obtained my fifth-grade school certificate I had a new destination. My travels would take me, in a southern direction, to Varese where the middle school I intended to attend was located.

I was excited at the prospect of having to commute daily to a city that was a metropolis in comparison to the town I lived in but was apprehensive about the journey.

I had been told that the train would go through a very long tunnel in darkness and then go across a 200-metre high viaduct with ten arches, built in 1894.

My worry was that everyone referred to this railway bridge as “Il Ponte Rotto”  (The Broken Bridge) which suggested that at some point in time, it had collapsed or at least been damaged. How safe was it?

At the beginning of the scholastic year, I was one of the passengers on an early train to Varese. I could see that the others were seasoned commuters whereas I was a trepidant traveller pretending to be self-assured.

As it happened, my fears were unjustified. The bridge proved to be solid as a rock and not in imminent danger of collapse. The only discomfort I felt was a sense of acrophobia when I looked out at the sheer drop from the railroad to the valley below.

I alighted from the train unscathed and made my way to the city centre, along a porticoed main street packed with luxury shops, and arrived at the school which was in the vicinity of the public gardens of the villa Estense.

This became routine throughout those academic years when I learned a lot apart from the reason why that viaduct was called  “the broken bridge”

 
© Luigi Pagano 2025