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Grand St. Bernard
2'469 m
Valais / Valle d'Aosta, Italy
The Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard is among the oldest and most storied crossings in the Alps, linking Martigny in the Valais with Aosta in Italy at 2,469 metres.
2'469 m
Valais / Valle d'Aosta, Italy
The Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard is among the oldest and most storied crossings in the Alps, linking Martigny in the Valais with Aosta in Italy at 2,469 metres.
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The Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard is among the oldest and most storied crossings in the Alps, linking Martigny in the Valais with Aosta in Italy at 2,469 metres. The Romans drove their legions over it as Mons Iovis, the Mountain of Jupiter, whose temple stood where the hospice stands today; medieval pilgrims toiled across it as the highest point of the Via Francigena to Rome; and around 1049 Bernard of Menthon founded that hospice at the summit, a refuge for travellers caught in the storms, still kept by its canons a thousand years on. In May 1800 Napoleon led some forty thousand men and his heavy artillery over the still-snowbound pass, marching south to meet the Austrians at Marengo.
Today the high road opens only for the brief summer – since 1964 a tunnel beneath the pass has carried the year-round traffic – leaving the climb from Martigny to cyclists and pilgrims drawn by its weight of history. And it is here that the world's most famous dogs were born: from around 1750 the canons bred the great St Bernards to find travellers lost in the snow, and one of them, Barry, is said to have saved more than forty lives.
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