Meet the Autogrill Bridge, Italy’s ubiquitous motorway restaurant chainCarlo Ratti on the Autogrill bridgeHere we are, in the middle of Italy's great summer exodus. We accelerate, and a few hundred metres on, the mystery is solved… It is all three things at once: the Autogrill bridge (Autogrill is Italy’s ubiquitous motorway restaurant chain, so dominant that its brand name has become the generic word for a rest stop). In the 1960s, the motorway was one of the great stages on which modern Italy performed, and the bridge Autogrill became its suspended gallery. One of Bianchetti's original drawings depicts the Montepulciano bridge Autogrill, now sadly demolished. The iconic Montepulciano bridge Autogrill, mentioned earlier, was torn down in 2021.