Autodromo Nazionale Monza

They built it in 110 days in 1922, deep inside a royal park, and motorsport has never been the same. The Autodromo Nazionale Monza — the "Temple of Speed" — is the third purpose-built circuit in the world, the perennial home of the Italian Grand Prix, and a lasting landmark in motor racing history.

Why it matters

No circuit carries more racing history per metre. Conceived in January 1922 by the Automobile Club of Milan for its twenty-fifth anniversary, the track was financed with private capital through a new company, S.I.A.S., chaired by Senator Silvio Crespi, with the project entrusted to architect Alfredo Rosselli. Work began on 15 May 1922 against a deadline of 15 August: the official history records about 3,500 workers, 200 carts, 30 trucks and a five-kilometre Decauville railway, and the circuit was finished in a record 110 days. The original plant combined a 5.5-kilometre road circuit with a 4.5-kilometre high-speed ring whose two banked curves crossed the road course at two levels over a tunnel — an audacious layout that set the template for the modern racing venue. Today the circuit sits inside the Parco di Monza and remains one of the sport's definitive arenas.

What to notice

The venue preserves layers of racing history. The 1955 banked oval — 4,250 metres of reinforced concrete with banking reaching an 80 percent gradient in its upper band, built for speeds of around 285 km/h — still curves away behind the trees, abandoned for Grand Prix racing after the fatal 1961 accident in which Wolfgang von Trips died along with spectators at the Parabolica, but preserved as one of motorsport's most evocative ruins. The current Grand Prix loop measures 5,793 metres, shaped by decades of safety work: chicanes added in 1972, replaced by two variantes in 1976, revisions to the Lesmo curves and first chicane in 1994–95, and a redesigned first variante in 2000. Its calendar has included the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix, the WEC 6 Hours and ACI Racing Weekends.

Context and history

The opening came on 3 September 1922, in the rain and in the presence of Prime Minister Luigi Facta, with a light-car race won by Pietro Bordino on a Fiat 501 corsa. Bordino and Felice Nazzaro had already run the first complete lap on 28 July in a Fiat 570, and a week after the opening, on 10 September 1922, the circuit hosted the second Italian Grand Prix — the first at Monza — won by Bordino on a Fiat 804. Across a century the track was continually reshaped in the name of safety without surrendering its character, and the circuit has been repeatedly reshaped; the nickname "Tempio della Velocità", the Temple of Speed, is now part of the venue's identity. The circuit also belongs to the history of the park that contains it: the estate was created from 1806 under Napoleon's viceroy Eugenio di Beauharnais, and the 1919 cession of the royal property opened the way for the racetrack of 1922, alongside the hippodrome of 1923 and the golf course of 1928.