The plan sounded almost unbelievable, and yet it was worked out down to the smallest detail: in 1907, the Italian Pietro Caminada presented his design for a waterway that would have made even the Panama Canal pale in comparison - across the Alps. The engineer, who was born in Milan in 1862, was by no means a dreamer. He had already earned his spurs on major construction projects, and his canal from Lake Constance to Genoa initially met with keen interest. Caminada had even patented the technology - a staircase of inclined tubular locks. The Splügen Pass between Italy and Switzerland was to be climbed chamber by chamber, with a tunnel connecting the two sides at an altitude of 1200 metres. However, the First World War caused this bold vision to be forgotten.
