The Temple of Speed
On the banks of the Lambro River is Europe’s largest enclosed park, all 688 hectares of it. Parco di Monza was commissioned by the son of an Austrian empress as a summer retreat in the late 1700s but it would be for another century and a half before ground was broken on what would become Italy’s famous theatre of speed at the park’s northern end. One hundred years ago on 3 September, less than four months after work started, Autodromo Nazionale di Monza was officially opened and the first race — appropriately, the Italian Grand Prix — was run a week later. Monza was the world’s third purpose-built circuit, after Brooklands and Indianapolis, and was the result of the Milan Automobile Club financing the 3500 workers who created the super-quick, and consequently dangerous, track that made the word ‘Monza’ synonymous for speed.
Over the past century there have been multiple configurations of the track — which is shaped like a deformed paper clip — including a steeply banked ‘oval’, the Grand Prix track, and a junior circuit. For English speakers, the corners and curves sounded wildly evocative and romantic: Curva Grande, the Parabolica, the Lesmos; and if they’re not enough, what about the
