Passo dello Stelvio

Between Trafoi and Bormio the Stelvio Pass climbs to 2,758 metres through 48 hairpin bends built for the Habsburg empire between 1820 and 1825 — a high Alpine crossing and the exposed summit of Stelvio National Park.

Why it matters

The road is a work of Habsburg statecraft: built between 1820 and 1825 under Emperor Francis II to bind Lombardy, newly part of the Austrian Empire, to the northern provinces. The northern ramp rises from the comune of Stilfs through Trafoi in 48 hairpin bends. At the summit, just under 2,800 metres, the high-altitude landscape is exposed to snow even in midsummer.

What to notice

The 48 turns frame views of the Trafoi valley and the Ortles-Cevedale range, whose glaciers rise to the east. At the summit stand the Church of Our Lady of the Snows and a seasonal meltwater lake. The ridgelines around the pass still carry traces of the First World War, when the front crossed these mountains. An older mule track crossed the area before the 1820s road, part of a long history of north-south passage.

Context and history

The road was cut between 1820 and 1825 on imperial orders, and its scale — some fifty kilometres of engineered mountain route — made it one of the boldest road works of its century. During the First World War the pass lay in a frontline zone, and the surrounding mountains were fortified. In 1935 it became part of the newly protected Stelvio National Park, which extends across three provinces. In the post-war decades the climb became a landmark of Italian cycling. Throughout, the pass has remained the territorial hinge of the comune of Stilfs: the northern ramps and the pass area belong to South Tyrol, while the road down to Bormio runs into Lombardy.