The building of the longest railway tunnel in the world: Mont Cenis/Fréjus (1857-1871) and the following tunnels

The Alpine tunnels represented in the XIX century the greatest efforts of technical research. The first of the long tunnel was the Mont Cenis, between Bardonecchia and Modane. The construction of the tunnel was decided in 1857, in 1860 the gallery became an international transit between Italy and France. The works were completed thanks to mechanical drills. Opened in November 1869 the Suez Canal, the Mont Cenis tunnel (13.6 km) was inaugurated two years later, in September 1871. After the opening of the Mont Cenis tunnel, the British company Peninsular & Oriental, who ran the service India Mail, began to pass their goods through the Italian peninsula. In the following decades, two other tunnels were built: Gottardo (15 km) and Sempione (19.8 km). All of these tunnels were the longest in the world at the time of construction. At the beginning of the XXI century, the base tunnels under the Alps, over 50 km long, are under construction.