Viva La Mille Miglia

A Brief History and Genesis of One of the World’s Most Famous Races.

Italy was still firmly entrenched in the 19th Century in 1926, when four men from Brescia put their heads together and invented the Mille Miglia. It was an agricultural and craft-oriented society dominated by a monarchy and a network of wealthy aristocrats. It was a land of ancient values and insular loyalties whose unification from a peninsula of small feudal states was at the root of bitter inter-province rivalry, a milder form of which still exists today.

It was only in 1926 that the last two bastions of motoring defiance capitulated and fell in with the rest of the country; Milan and Turin finally decreed their motorists should also drive on the right hand side of the road. Difficult though it is to believe, the practice in Italy had previously been to drive on the left in cities and on the right in the countryside!