2'314 m
Graubünden / Lombardia, Italy
The Forcola di Livigno is a quiet, curious little border pass at 2,315 metres, linking the tax-free Italian town of Livigno with the Bernina road in Swiss Graubünden, set between the peaks of Piz Minor and Monte Vago.
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The Forcola di Livigno is a quiet, curious little border pass at 2,315 metres, linking the tax-free Italian town of Livigno with the Bernina road in Swiss Graubünden, set between the peaks of Piz Minor and Monte Vago. Livigno is nicknamed "Little Tibet" for its historic seclusion and the snow-clad summits that ring it: until the winter of 1952/53, when the Foscagno road first opened in the cold months, the village was cut off from the world from the first autumn snows until the spring melt. Out of that isolation grew its remarkable tax status, whose earliest exemptions trace back to 1538 under the County of Bormio. The logic was simple: the place was hard to reach in winter and long mired in poverty, so successive rulers granted privileges to give people a reason to stay (and the territory to be claimed), while the forgone tax revenue would have been negligible anyway. Astonishingly, the status survives today: Livigno lies inside the EU but outside its VAT area, so duty-free trade continues.
Closed by snow from October until late spring, the Forcola comes alive in summer, a favourite of cyclists drawn to Livigno, and a resort the professionals use as a high-altitude training base. And right at the summit, where the Italian and Swiss borders meet, you'll find Livigno's last tax-free shop and a little mountain café: so you can crest a high Alpine pass and pick up duty-free chocolate at the top. A small, odd, lovable crossing rather than a grand one, and all the more charming for it.
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