Treni della felicità

[6] At the 5th PCI Congress [it], it was decided to shift the focus of the initiative to southern Italy, which was poorer and less developed than the north.

[8] Between 1945 and 1952, around 70,000 children from Lazio, Campania, Apulia, Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia were hosted by families in Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Marche, Veneto, and Lombardy in northern Italy.

The majority of the children would eventually return home, but still maintained relationships with their host families in the subsequent years.

[12] In addition to the UCI and the PCI, the initiative was supported by the ANPI, CGIL, and Italian Red Cross.

[7] In 2019, Viola Ardone published Il treno dei bambini, a novel about a young Neapolitan boy who travels to northern Italy on the treni della felicità.