Funicolare Como-Brunate

This guide to the Funicolare Como-Brunate on Lake Como starts with a share certificate: in eighteen ninety-one, Como residents and villa owners pooled money into fourteen hundred shares to fund a cable line up this hillside, betting on real estate as much as transport. It follows the lawyer Carlo Sacchi and the engineer brothers Villoresi racing to finish the line, and the steam engine bolted in when Como's water supply couldn't power the planned hydraulic winch. Electricity didn't replace it until nineteen eleven. Stand at the station and picture the empty slopes above you before anyone built here.