Driving the Stelvio Pass

The Stelvio Pass climbs to 2,757 m, the second-highest paved pass in the Alps, over 48 numbered hairpins on its northern side. It is a toll-free public road, it usually opens in the second half of May, and it is best driven at first light before the crowds arrive.

No alpine road is more photographed, and few are more misunderstood. The Stelvio is not the hardest pass in the Alps to drive, nor the highest, nor the most beautiful. What it is, unarguably, is the most concentrated: a wall of switchbacks stacked so tightly up the mountainside that the road looks, from above, like a dropped ribbon.

The road

The classic view is the northern ramp from Prato allo Stelvio, where 48 numbered hairpins climb the mountainside in a neat, relentless stack. Each bend is signed with its number, counting down as you climb, which turns the drive into a countdown to the summit. The southern approach from Bormio is longer and a little more open, and the Umbrail branch drops west into Switzerland over its own 2,501 m pass.

Built between 1820 and 1825 under the Austrian Empire to link Lombardy with the Tyrol, the road's layout is essentially unchanged two centuries on. It is a genuine engineering monument, not a modern scenic road, and it drives like one: narrow, unforgiving of hesitation, and utterly absorbing.

When to drive it

The Stelvio opens when its snow is cleared, usually in the second half of May, and closes with the first heavy snow in late October or early November. In 2026 it opened on 22 May.

Within the season, the enemy is traffic. By ten in the morning through July and August the hairpins are a slow-moving column of coaches, cyclists and motorcycles, and the drive you came for becomes a crawl. The answer is simple and unglamorous: start early. First light on the Stelvio, with the valley still in shadow and the road to yourself, is one of the great drives in Europe. For live status before you commit, see our alpine pass opening dates guide.

Driving it from the UK

The Stelvio sits about 1,100 km from Calais, in the far east of the Italian Alps near the Swiss and Austrian borders. That is a two-day drive south with an overnight stop, and it pairs naturally with the Dolomites, an hour or so further east. Because Italy has no motorway vignette and the pass has no toll, the only costs are the Channel crossing, French and Italian motorway tolls, and fuel. See driving to the Alps from the UK for the full run south.

It also compares interestingly with Austria's Grossglockner, the other great name in alpine driving: Stelvio vs Grossglockner sets the two side by side.

Common questions