Autostrade per l’Italia Brand Guidelines: IRI’s 1950 Roots, the A1 & an Interlaced A

A post-war state company and the road to Naples.

Autostrade per l’Italia, known by the initials ASPI, runs Italian motorways under concession from its head office in Rome. Its roots go back to 1950, when the state holding company IRI set up the Società Autostrade Concessioni e Costruzioni to take part in Italy’s post-war reconstruction, according to Italian Wikipedia. In 1956 the company signed its first agreement with the road agency ANAS to co-finance, build and run the Autostrada del Sole between Milan and Naples; the A1 was inaugurated on 4 October 1964, the motoring site HDmotori recalled in October 2024.

The business was grouped with other concession companies in 1982 and listed on the Milan stock exchange in 1987, with IRI keeping the majority. In 1990 it introduced Telepass, its electronic toll-payment system. IRI sold its controlling stake in a privatisation completed in March 2000 to Schemaventotto, a consortium led by Edizione, Italian Wikipedia says; the listed parent later took the names Autostrade S.p.A., Atlantia in 2007 and, from March 2023, Mundys.

Autostrade per l’Italia itself was created as a separate, wholly owned company on 1 July to hold the Italian motorway concessions, staff and holdings, so that the parent could expand abroad; accounts differ on whether that was in 2002 or 2003. In July 2017 the parent sold minority stakes to Appia Investments, a vehicle of Allianz Capital Partners, EDF Invest and DIF Capital Partners, and to the Silk Road Fund.

On 5 May 2022 Holding Reti Autostradali completed its purchase of Atlantia’s 88.06% stake, Affaritaliani reported that day. The buyer is owned by CDP Equity of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti group (51%), Blackstone Infrastructure Partners (24.5%) and funds managed by Macquarie Asset Management (24.5%).

A network split into nine tronchi.

Italian Wikipedia puts the network run directly by the company at about 2,855 km, and at about 3,000 km across 15 regions together with its subsidiary concession companies, with the concession running to the end of 2038. The roads it runs directly include the A1 from Milan to Naples, most of the A14 Adriatica from Bologna to Taranto, the A16, the A26 and the A8 and A9 Milan–Laghi motorways. Subsidiaries run the Naples ring road (Tangenziale di Napoli), part of the A12 on the Tuscan coast and, through a 51% stake in its Italian operating company, the Italian side of the Mont Blanc tunnel. Day-to-day operations are split into nine regional directorates called tronchi, based in cities including Genoa, Bologna, Florence, Pescara, Bari and Udine.

The group also includes companies for construction and paving (Amplia, formerly Nuova Pavimental), engineering and works supervision (Tecne), transport technology (Movyon, formerly Autostrade Tech, which designs the Telepass equipment), renewable energy (Elgea) and advertising and events at service areas (AdMoving), according to the same source.

Work on the network is reported in the national press. In October 2026 Euronews reported that digging had finished on the new San Donato tunnel, about 950 metres long with three southbound lanes, part of an 18 km widening of the A1 between Florence South and Incisa Reggello; the company plans to open three-lane sections progressively from 2028.

The current identity dates from 4 October 2024, the A1’s 60th anniversary, when ASPI presented a new brand identity; the company said the logo expresses the complexity of its network, its connection with the places it crosses and a digital, sustainable future, HDmotori reported. Italian Wikipedia describes the mark as an interlaced “A” and says the rebrand brought in the Inter typeface for the logo, website and official documents, alongside the line “Autostrade è quello che facciamo, per l’Italia è perché lo facciamo” (roughly, “motorways are what we do; for Italy is why we do it”). According to Youmark in December 2024, the new brand was developed under the creative direction of Inarea, led by Antonio Romano.

How road operators present themselves.

Toll-road and parking operators sell access to something the customer can already see: a stretch of motorway, a tunnel, a multi-storey car park. Their visual identity therefore lives in two places at once. On the road it appears on gantries, toll plazas, barrier arms, ticket machines and the signs at a car-park entrance; online it appears on corporate websites, annual reports and investor presentations, where the same company explains its concessions to shareholders and lenders.

Network maps and road photography carry much of the corporate side. Operators publish maps of the routes or sites they run, usually as simple lines and dots over a pale base, together with photographs of interchanges, viaducts, tunnels and car parks, often taken from above. Concession pages and investor sections list each asset with its length or number of spaces, its concession dates and its ownership structure, and many groups give each road or site its own page or its own website under its own name.

Parking brands meet a shared visual language at the kerb. The blue and white “P” sign is the common shorthand for parking across much of the world, and operators place their own name and colours beside it on entrance signs, pay stations and barrier arms. Customer apps have become a second front door: their screenshots, as the companies publish them, typically show a map of nearby sites, a booking or payment screen and a digital ticket or account page.

Toll operators increasingly present themselves through electronic tolling, with transponder tags, licence-plate accounts and apps that show trips and statements, so their customer materials lean on clear numbers, simple icons and plain instructions. Across the category the tone is practical and reassuring rather than playful: a name that needs to be read at speed, a limited palette and a sans-serif that stays legible on a sign, a phone and a results page alike.

Gaber, Iwan Baan and Corto Maltese.

The launch campaign for the new brand, “La libertà è movimento” (“freedom is movement”), went on air on 4 December 2024. Youmark reported that it was created by Luca Josi and Allegra Scattaglia of MEP, produced by Think Cattleya and directed by Igor Borghi, and set to Giorgio Gaber’s song “La libertà”. It was filmed along the A1 Panoramica through the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines and on the San Donato tunnel site, with the workers on the job appearing instead of actors; poster versions show motorway structures on the network photographed by Iwan Baan.

Baan returned for “Linee in movimento”, a book project turned exhibition shown at the Rimini Meeting from 21 to 26 August 2026. Euronews reported that it pairs his photographs with illustrations by Hugo Pratt, featuring Pratt’s sailor-adventurer Corto Maltese, and texts by Fabrizio Paladini, telling ten stories set in places along the network, with a three-metre statue of Corto Maltese made by Opera Laboratori greeting visitors.

For a design guide, Autostrade per l’Italia shows how a motorway operator can tie a corporate mark to its roads, its works sites and the landscapes it crosses, using photography and illustration rather than product imagery. Compare Mundys, its former parent, and Abertis, the Spanish toll-road group controlled by Mundys, according to Italian Wikipedia. For this guide we use a deep motorway blue, asphalt grey, a verge green and a warm amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Autostrade per l’Italia’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.