⁍ Just two years after part of Genoa’s Morandi bridge collapsed killing 43 people, a new structure opens in its place on Monday.

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⁍ The new kilometre-long bridge, designed by star architect Renzo Piano, replaces the old motorway viaduct.

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⁍ The accident laid bare years of mismanagement and poor maintenance.

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– “It’s a symbol of a new Italy, rising up again,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said ahead of Monday’s inauguration of a new bridge in Genoa, two years after the city’s Morandi Bridge collapsed, killing 43 people. The 5,200-foot-long Genova-San Giorgio bridge is more than twice the length of the old bridge, designed by famed architect Renzo Piano, and is expected to ease traffic in the port city, which was hit hard by the disaster, the AP reports. The new bridge is more than twice the length of the old bridge, and is expected to reduce the travel time between Genoa and Milan from two hours to 90 minutes. The new bridge was completed 18 months after the August 2018 disaster, and is expected to reduce the travel time between Genoa and Milan from three hours to two. The new bridge was paid for and built with funds from a fund set up by the European Union to help Italy recover from the disaster and other infrastructure failures, Reuters reports. The government pushed through an emergency decree to speed up the demolition of the old bridge and replace it with the new structure in just 18 months. “There’s a feeling of both regret for what happened and pride in the work that’s been done,” says Marco Bucci, Genoa’s commissioner for bridge reconstruction. “We’ve worked and shown Italian excellence.”