★ 1000 Miglia

01Why it matters

No other historic motoring event has this reach into a country's public life. The 1000 Miglia is a national occasion in Italy rather than a collectors' gathering, and its scale — a week of road closures across half the peninsula — depends on a level of civic cooperation that would be unimaginable elsewhere. For owners, it is the most desirable use to which a prewar competition car can be put, and eligibility for it materially affects what such cars are worth.

In our reading, the 2027 centenary is the more significant date of the pair: the organizer has extended the format, moved it into late May and pointed the route at the prewar itinerary, and it will draw entries and attention on a scale the annual event does not normally reach.

02The week around it

Brescia is the anchor city and the only place where the event feels like a festival rather than a passing column. The days before the start bring scrutineering in Piazza della Vittoria, which is open and free to walk through, and the city's museums and the Santa Giulia complex run parallel programming. The start on Viale Venezia is a public spectacle lasting several hours; the finish, several days later, is the same in reverse and is followed by an awards ceremony and an evening event.

Along the route, the effect is different every day. Each overnight city — the list changes annually and has recently included Ferrara, Rome, Siena, Parma and others — gets a night of closed streets and several hundred cars parked in the center. Anyone wanting to see the event without crowds should pick a small town on the published route rather than Brescia or Rome.

03When to arrive

For the Brescia start, arrive the day before scrutineering finishes and stay through the departure. For the roadside, choose a single day and a single stretch and get there two hours early; the published route and timetable make this straightforward. Following the whole event by car is possible but demanding, because the field moves faster than public traffic on closed roads.

04Where to stay

Brescia has a modest supply of hotels and they fill for the start and finish; the city center around Piazza della Loggia is the place to be. Lake Garda, twenty to forty minutes east, has far more rooms and is the standard overflow — Sirmione, Desenzano and Salo — with the trade-off of a slow drive back on the start evening. Verona and Bergamo are each about an hour and both have good rail links. Along the route, the overnight cities book out for their single night and the surrounding countryside does not.

05Access and hospitality

Watching is free and unrestricted along the entire route; the organizer publishes the itinerary and timings in advance and this is how the overwhelming majority of people experience the event. Entering a car requires application to the organizer, acceptance of eligibility on the basis of the model's history in the original race, and payment of an entry fee that the organizer publishes to applicants. The organizer also sells hospitality around the Brescia start and finish and runs the parallel tribute columns for owners of ineligible modern cars from the sponsoring marques. We did not verify current entry fees or hospitality prices and quote none.

06Where the social activity happens

Piazza della Vittoria and Piazza della Loggia in Brescia during scrutineering, the Viale Venezia ramp on the start evening, and the finish area several days later. In the overnight cities the main square becomes an open-air paddock for a night, which is the event's most sociable setting and entirely public. Sponsor hospitality clusters at the start and finish and around the Lake Garda hotels.

07Getting there

08Practicalities

09History

Counts Franco Mazzotti and Aymo Maggi founded the race in 1927 in response to Brescia losing the Italian Grand Prix to Monza. It ran twenty-four times, thirteen before the Second World War and eleven after, and became the definitive test of Italian sports cars; Stirling Moss's 1955 run with Denis Jenkinson remains the most written-about drive in the event's history. It ended after the 1957 edition, when a Ferrari 335 S crashed at Guidizzolo, killing the driver Alfonso de Portago, his co-driver Edmund Nelson and nine spectators. Open-road racing in Italy was effectively finished.

The name returned in 1977 as a regularity event for historic cars, organized from Brescia and restricted to models that had appeared in the original race. It grew steadily through the 1980s and 1990s into its present form, acquired manufacturer tributes and a commercial apparatus, and is now run by a company of the Automobile Club Brescia. The 2027 edition marks one hundred years since the first running.

10Who is there

Owners and crews of prewar and 1950s competition cars, many of them repeat entrants; Italian and international collectors; the sponsoring marques' client programs, which fill the tribute columns; motoring media; and, above all, an enormous general Italian public that lines the route for free and has done so for generations. The roadside audience is the event's defining constituency and is unlike anything else in the automotive calendar.