Domodossola International Station is much more than a simple railway station: it is the calling card for those arriving in Italy from Central Europe through the Simplon Tunnel.
Architect Luigi Boffi
The station was designed by architect Luigi Boffi, selected to design the stations along the entire line running from Arona up the western shore of Lake Maggiore and through the Ossola Valley to the border at Iselle di Trasquera. Boffi conceived buildings with 4, 6, 8 or 10 bays, retaining Art Nouveau elements that varied according to the importance of the places served. For Domodossola, an international station and a true calling card for passengers arriving from across the Alps, he created a 23-bay version to accommodate the customs offices and those of the railway station. The architect even moved to the town to oversee the construction site personally.
Baveno granite and Art Nouveau finials
From an architectural point of view, the station façade features a string course made of Baveno granite and three finials rising from the building, decorative elements typical of the Art Nouveau style of the period. The station, located in Piazza Matteotti, has 6 through tracks served by 4 platforms.
A station designed for Europe
From its nineteenth-century design stage, it was known that one of the main communication routes between Italy and Central Europe would pass through this station, thanks to the future opening of the Simplon railway tunnel, inaugurated in 1906. Even today, the station retains border functions, with active customs offices for passengers travelling between Italy and Switzerland.
The station in the heart of Domodossola
The historic centre of Domodossola, with Piazza Mercato, is only a few minutes’ walk from the station. To learn more about the building’s history, see the Wikipedia entry on Domodossola Station.
Those arriving by train can also easily reach the vineyards surrounding the town, with a tasting just a few minutes from the tracks.
A memory preserved in vintage postcards
Numerous vintage postcards, now kept by collectors and historical archives, bear witness to the appearance of the station in the early decades of the twentieth century, with tracks crowded with travellers heading across the Alps: images that tell of the importance this station immediately held for connections between Italy and Northern Europe.
A border still in operation
Domodossola International Station remains one of the main crossing points on the border between Italy and Switzerland, alongside other crossings such as Iselle di Trasquera and the Great St Bernard, for both rail and road traffic: a border role that Boffi’s building has performed since its construction over a century ago, and which still confirms its strategic importance for connections between Italy and Northern Europe.
An architectural heritage to preserve
Preserving the building designed by Boffi is now an important challenge for the relevant authorities, which are called upon to balance the need for technological modernisation of railway facilities with the protection of an early twentieth-century architectural heritage that continues to represent a symbol of identity for the entire town of Domodossola.
A building that continues quietly to tell over a century of history of connections between Italy and Switzerland.
A model for the other stations on the line
Boffi’s design for Domodossola became, in some way, a reference model for the other smaller stations on the same line, albeit with the necessary differences in scale: a stylistic unity that still makes it possible to recognise the buildings designed by the same architect along the entire route from Arona to the Swiss border, in a rare example of design consistency applied to an entire railway infrastructure.
A history spanning more than a century, still in motion.
Even today, a hundred years later, that design remains valid.
