The Tenda pass reopens: France and Italy closer together

A breath of fresh air for the Alpine passes. Yesterday in Limone Piemonte (Cuneo), in the presence of the Italian and French authorities, the opening ceremony for the new Colle di Tenda road tunnel was held. The re-establishment of transit traffic represents a decisive boost to the economic and tourist revival of a large part of the North West. The event was attended, among others, by the Ministers of Transport of Italy and France, Matteo Salvini and Philippe Tabarot, the Presidents of the regions of Piedmont and Liguria (Alberto Cirio and Marco Bucci), and the CEO of Anas (FS group), Claudio Andrea Gemme. The ceremony took place at the entrance to the tunnel on the Italian side.

Il vice Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri e Ministro delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti Matteo Salvini, il Ministro dei Trasporti francese Philippe Tabarot, il viceministro delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti Edoardo Rixi, il Presidente della Regione Piemonte Alberto Cirio, il Presidente della Regione Liguria Marco Bucci, l’Amministratore Delegato di Anas Claudio Andrea Gemme e il Sindaco di Limone Piemonte Massimo Riberi, durante l'inaugurazione del nuovo Tunnel del Colle di Tenda, un’opera fondamentale per la viabilità e i collegamenti tra Italia e Francia, in particolare tra il Piemonte, la Liguria e la regione francese delle Alpi Marittime. Limone. ANSA/LUCA ZENNARO

At the end of March, the Frejus rail tunnel was reactivated. Now it is the turn of the road to Tenda, a strategic infrastructure for those travelling from Piedmont and Liguria to France: after years of emergency, cross-border connections between the two nations seem to be returning to normal. The new tunnel will be open from today, Saturday 28 June, from 12 noon to 9 p.m. Tomorrow and on the following weekends it will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., a schedule that should be confirmed for the rest of the summer (including weekdays) from 18 July. However, it will be a hiccup opening. In fact, the circulation will be one-way, alternating: traffic will be managed by a traffic light, with waits that may even be long. Possible two-way traffic will be evaluated in the course of 2026, after the works on the French side of the road, which affect some hairpin bends, are completed.

Says Salvini: 'Days like today are beautiful. We are making sacrifices and investments for the Italy of tomorrow. This work is fundamental for citizens, for work and for tourism'. Even with the alternating one-way, the activation of Tenda is a significant event for the macro-region, which was hard hit by the closure of the old tunnel after the flood of October 2020. Now, the new 3.2-kilometre-long tunnel re-establishes the shortest connection between the province of Cuneo, Imperia and the French Riviera. The total investment for the work, including the post-flood interventions and the external construction sites on the Italian and French sides, amounts to approximately EUR 210 million.

The managing director of Anas, Claudio Andrea Gemme, goes over the long series of critical issues that have been overcome, "some of them so serious that they risked blocking the work indefinitely, including the termination of the contract with the previous contractor due to non-fulfilment, the process of entrusting the work to a second company (Edilmaco), and the Alex storm of 2020, which to all intents and purposes rewrote the work programme, making it necessary to design unforeseen works. But in the end we will open a tunnel with the most modern safety installations to traffic. In addition to the new tunnel, which joins the historic one, a 70-metre steel bridge with an arch structure has also been built, enabling the landslide area in the Ca' valley to be overcome.