2'066 m
Graubünden
For centuries the San Bernardino has been one of the great north–south crossings of the Alps, linking the German-speaking Rheinwald with the Italian valleys of southern Graubünden at 2,066 metres.
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For centuries the San Bernardino has been one of the great north–south crossings of the Alps, linking the German-speaking Rheinwald with the Italian valleys of southern Graubünden at 2,066 metres. In use since prehistoric times and first recorded in 941, it carried merchants, mule trains, and travellers between two worlds, and takes its name from San Bernardino of Siena, the wandering preacher said to have stopped here in the early fifteenth century. Its summit marks a true threshold: the watershed between the Rhine and the Po, and the frontier where German gives way to Italian.
Today, with most through-traffic swallowed by the tunnel opened in 1967, the old summit road belongs to those who seek it out. More than forty hairpins unspool down the southern flank toward the Mesolcina, past a small lake cupped beneath the bare peaks of the Lepontine Alps. Closed each winter under snow, the San Bernardino is far more than a pass: a high, quiet crossing between two cultures, and one of the most rewarding climbs in the Alps for any cyclist drawn to the great roads of the mountains.
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