Since the Roman times Italians were great road and bridge builders. Roman roads are still around today as many roman bridge and aqueducts are. Even modern Italians are great bridge builders. Particularly around holidays. In the early time of the republic ( 1950s ) there was only one day of weekly holiday, Sunday, now there are 2, Saturday and Sunday. Then Italians around the 80s figure out that if for example Tuesday was a holiday they could build a bridge from Sunday to Tuesday and take Monday as a holiday as well therefore building a 4 day bridge. Now the technique is much more advance however. As you notice the 1st of January was a Monday and it was a holiday. Most companies I deal with managed to build a bridge all the way to next week end, January 6th. This is a great achievement in bridge construction since this bridge was connected to the Christmas bridge that spanned over 2 weeks in length !
Paolo

Paolo,

I noticed this same bridge phenomenon when I was in Rome this last summer! For me it manifested itself most often in the form of time. Between the lunch break and evening, the stores closed for lunch and then rather than opening for the afternoon they stayed closed until late afternoon, bridging the time between lunch and later quite nicely, allowing everyone to catch up on much needed sleep before dinner!

Teresa

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Often when I'm in Italy in the winter these bridges are still open! They especially seem to be open whenever we catch the train to a different town and the clothes in the shops look especially good! I don't understand why the Italians like to have siestas even on the coldest days! I am not a frivolous 'shopaholic' but it is very depressing to see closed shops!

Pretty soon these Italians will start building the San Fransico Bridge right smack in Italy, and have the whole week, the entire month, and the complete year, to reside in the holidays an eternity----