Great St. Bernard - Switzerland/Italy

The bordercrossing between Switzerland and Italy is particulary interesting, because major traffic is able to circumvent it through a tunnel.

4y ago
1.6K

First of all I have to apologize for the weather. I waited half a day, but no clearance of rain and clouds was in sight, so I just went with a wet road. The evening before I already got a slight glimpse of dry driving conditions though, but it was already to dark for any useful recordings.

I'm only going to recomend the swiss side of the pass here. While you can clearly see the stunning curves and the flow of the road on italian side, it is utterly limited to 60 km/h all the way, a speed at which it is quite difficult to capture the thrills of a road. And I won't ever tell you to drive faster than legally allowed. For obvious reasons.

As stated, the actual passage of this road is a major traffic connection, but which thankfully has a tunnel far underneath the mountaintop. This means all the curvy-bits are only frequented by people, who are actually there for the pass itself, which leads to a great low traffic environment. We start at the junction of the tunnel on swiss side and crawl our way up the mountain. The climb itself isn't particularly long, but it really feels amazingly raw. There are almost no trees as far as you can see and everywhere barren rock breaks way through the grass- and moss-fields. This gives you the feeling of being further away from civilization than you actually are, which is a great thing in my eyes. Of course there are some buildings at the top, especially since there is an EU-Border, but the nature has you back even on the italian side. Although the road character itself is much different.

Whereas on swiss territory the road is open, sometimes bumpy and generally with little barriers or guardrails, the opposite is the case in italy. You're acompanied by constant barriers in different shapes and forms and the road is amazingly smooth.

Getting here on a sunny day will surely be more beautiful to watch, but I guess the traffic might also increase. Despite the weather, you will even have a great experience on the Great St. Bernard if the road is wet, which is the reason this magnificent pass, closeby to the highest peaks in the alps, truly deserves it's place on this tribe.

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