[6] The 111-year-old bridge was located on the river Magra at about 9 km (6 mi) south from the town of Aulla, a comune in the province of Massa and Carrara, Tuscany in central Italy.

[2] ANAS S.p.A. (Azienda Nazionale Autonoma delle Strade, English: National Autonomous Roads Corporation), was in charge of the maintenance of the bridge.

Attilio Muggia (1861 – 1936),[7][8][9] a Venetian engineer and pioneer of reinforced concrete in Italy, designed and built the bridge on the Magra river to connect Albiano with Caprigliola and Liguria with Tuscany.

[14][1][10] The bridge was badly damaged in spring 1945 at the end of World War II (79 years ago) by mines set by retreating troops of the German Wehrmacht.

[10] During the reconstruction, the original characteristics of the project of Muggia and Ferrari were preserved but the bridge was adapted for greater mechanical loads required by a heavier traffic.

In December 2018, responsibility was transferred to the infrastructure company Azienda Nazionale Autonoma delle Strade SpA (ANAS) along with other 1,300 bridges across Italy, and 3,500 kilometres (2,200 mi) of roads.

In an August 2019 letter, Vincenzo Marzi, then head of the ANAS department for Tuscany, replied that "The viaduct for the moment does not present criticalities such as to compromise its static functionality".

According to inGENIO,[13] an Italian technical magazine for architects, construction engineers and geotechnicians, an unknown localized damage seems to have propagated and caused a chain collapse (domino effect).

This tragic event illustrates the weaknesses sometimes encountered in early 20th century engineering structures which were not originally designed to comply with the present requirement of defence-in-depth in order to prevent the devastating consequences of an uncontrolled destructive propagation.