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Simplon
2'005 m
Valais / Piemonte, Italy
The Simplon, at 2,005 metres the lowest of all the passes linking the Valais to the south, carries the road from Brig down to Domodossola in Italy.
2'005 m
Valais / Piemonte, Italy
The Simplon, at 2,005 metres the lowest of all the passes linking the Valais to the south, carries the road from Brig down to Domodossola in Italy.
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The Simplon, at 2,005 metres the lowest of all the passes linking the Valais to the south, carries the road from Brig down to Domodossola in Italy. It has been crossed since the Bronze Age, and by the 12th century formed the heart of the trade route between the markets of Upper Italy and the fairs of Champagne. In the 17th century Kaspar Jodok von Stockalper – "the King of the Simplon" – reorganised the trade between Milan and France and ran the first stagecoach line over the pass. Then Napoleon, master of northern Italy, had the road widened into a broad military highway, completed in 1805: 63 kilometres with eight great bridges and seven rock galleries, reckoned the first true highway over the Alps.
Beneath the pass runs the Simplon railway tunnel, opened in 1906 – at nearly 20 kilometres, the longest railway tunnel in the world for most of the twentieth century, and the route of the legendary Orient Express between Paris and Istanbul. Because it is comparatively low, the Simplon is one of the few high passes kept open all year, rather than closed each winter like most at this altitude. And at the windswept summit, beside the great Napoleonic hospice, the largest on any Alpine pass, an eight-metre stone eagle, raised during the Second World War, keeps watch.
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