The availability of reliable steel cables has allowed, starting from the second half of 19th century, their application in the transport field according to different design concepts, starting with land funiculars (since 1861 with the Agudio system), and then continuing with cableways for goods transportation (starting from 1889) and after a short time, between the 19th and 20th centuries, arriving at the first cableways for people transportation.

Therefore, starting from the beginning of the 20th century in Italy, the adventure of this innovative transport system for tourist use began, which initially evolved slowly and then gradually quicker, until reaching the threshold of the 21st century with a technology level unimaginable only 70 years earlier; this therefore makes the time interval between the first post-war period and the 1990s particularly interesting. Right in the first 40 years of the 20th century appear those people who will be fully called “pioneers” of a new way of understanding mountain: engineers, architects, industrialists and entrepreneurs, all equally far-sighted.

Thanks to the cableway transport industry, Italian winter tourism (the so-called “white circus”) had an enormous development, for which today a turnover of around 6.6 billion euros is estimated. This turnover therefore represents almost 3% of the national GDP and the contribution of the network of ski lifts existing on Italian territory (over 1700 installations) is a fundamental support.

A specific branch of national legislation regulates their construction and operation and a broad technical regulation, now harmonized at European level, deals with specifying the design criteria of the individual construction elements.

In the last 20 years then, in parallel with the application in mountain areas, which is now reaching its apogee, the idea of “aerial” transport is gradually taking hold in the context of urban transport.