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St. Luzisteig
713 m
Graubünden / Liechtenstein, FL
The Sankt Luzisteig is a low saddle, just 713 metres, on the border between Graubünden and Liechtenstein, linking Maienfeld with Balzers.
713 m
Graubünden / Liechtenstein, FL
The Sankt Luzisteig is a low saddle, just 713 metres, on the border between Graubünden and Liechtenstein, linking Maienfeld with Balzers.
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The Sankt Luzisteig is a low saddle, just 713 metres, on the border between Graubünden and Liechtenstein, linking Maienfeld with Balzers. Modest in height, it was for centuries one of the most strategically vital points in the eastern Alps: because the floor of the Rhine valley was so often flooded and impassable, the north–south road – part of the Roman route from Bregenz to Chur – ran over this gap instead, and until the railway arrived in 1858 it was the only route between Graubünden and Vorarlberg, and so to southern Germany. Whoever held the Steig held the door into Graubünden.
So it was fortified again and again. A medieval barrier, the Letzi Grafenberg, already saw combat in the Swabian War of 1499; the pass was fought over through the Thirty Years' War, and on 5 March 1799 General Masséna stormed it, routing the Austrians and taking some 800 prisoners. The fortress was rebuilt in its present form between 1850 and 1860, and – remarkably – it remains a Swiss Army site to this day, with shooting ranges and a military museum at the summit. All of it set in the gentle vineyard country of the Bündner Herrschaft, the "Heidi land" around Maienfeld – a peaceful wine landscape guarding a much-contested gate.
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