5 of 44 roads · 167 km · Italy, Switzerland and Austria
Tolls, gate times and closures researched for the 2026 season. Every road carries the source it came from.
5 roads shown
167 km of road
Start here
Five roads to try. Start with Drive the route.
Drive the route hands the whole road to Google Maps, corner for corner, on the phone in your hand. No app, no account, no sign-in.
GPX file is the exact geometry, for komoot, Kurviger, Calimoto, OsmAnd or your car's own navigation. The PDF has the same road on one page, for when there is no signal.
Get me to the start hands Apple Maps or Waze a single destination, which is the job they do well. Only Google Maps can follow a whole road from a link.
One of these five turns you round at the barrier without a booking.
Distance is measured from the GPX file we ship, drawn from OpenStreetMap. No published figure for these exact stretches was found to check it against, so the file is the only measurement this book has and it is the one printed.
How the drive score works
The drive score is not a feeling. It is three separate judgements, combined by one formula, applied the same way to all 44 roads.
I rate each road's corners from 0 to 5 and its scenery from 0 to 5, then subtract a traffic penalty from 0, near empty, to 2, crowded. The published score is corners, plus four fifths of scenery, minus three fifths of the traffic penalty, rescaled to a mark out of ten. Corners count for more than scenery, on purpose: this is a driving book, not a viewpoint list.
Those three ratings are judgement, not measurement. They come from maps, elevation profiles, curve counts and other drivers' published accounts rather than from a road test, which is exactly what the score is for: comparing the roads in this book against each other on one consistent scale. It cannot know the surface, the weather, or the traffic on the day you actually go.
Use it to compare roads against each other, not as a promise.
IT · 15
Open now
Stelvio Pass
8.7
Passo dello Stelvio
Score
Lombardia–Alto Adige · SS38 · Point to point
5 kmNPrato allo StelvioBormio
Prato allo StelvioBormioOpenStreetMap
Distance
43.5 km
High point
2 758 m
Access
Bike day
shut 29 Aug
Scenery
5/5
Corners
5/5
Season
22 May to Nov
The drive
Italy's highest pass. From Prato the 48 numbered hairpins stack up one wall to 2,758 m, each corner tighter than the last; from Bormio 40 more drop through galleries and the Braulio gorge. The Umbrail joins 200 m below the top.
Before you go
All three sides opened 22 May 2026 at 10:00; shuts with the first heavy snow, usually November. Car-free on the Stelvio Bike Day, 29 August 2026. In July and August go before 08:00 or after 17:00: by ten the hairpins are a queue.
Four passes round one massif in about an hour and a half: Campolongo at 1,875 m, the Pordoi's 33 hairpins to 2,239 m, the Sella at 2,240 m under the Sassolungo, the Gardena at 2,121 m. Start at Corvara before eight or share every bend with a coach.
Before you go
All four passes stay open through winter. Closed to engines 08:30 to 16:00 on the Sellaronda Bike Days, 6 June and 12 September 2026, and on 5 July for the Maratona dles Dolomites. The Gardena's traffic-zone trial starts in September 2026.
Anterselva di MezzoSt. Jakob in DefereggenOpenStreetMap
Distance
24.8 km
High point
2 052 m
Access
One-way
15 min an hour each way
Scenery
5/5
Corners
4/5
Season
mid-May to end Oct
The drive
Along the Antholz lake and its Olympic biathlon stadium, then a single lane hung on the mountainside to the Obersee at 2,052 m and the border. Fifteen minutes an hour each way is the point: you are alone with the lake below and an empty valley ahead.
Before you go
Open mid-May to end October, 05:30 to 22:15. The last stretch on the Italian side is 2.5 m wide and one-way by traffic light: into Austria minutes 30 to 45 of each hour, into Italy minutes 1 to 15. Miss it and you wait. No buses or trailers.
Up from Andermatt to the 2,106 m hospice, then down the Tremola: 24 cobbled hairpins in the Val Tremola, Switzerland's longest road monument, built in 1832 and still paved in granite setts, the new road curving past on viaducts. Keep to the cobbles.
Before you go
Pass road opened 16 May 2026, the Tremola on 22 May; both close 7 November 2026. The Tremola is limited to 3.5 t and cobbled the whole way: slow, and slippery in rain. Lorries are banned. The Alpenbrevet cycle event crosses on 5 September 2026.
Over the Tre Croci to the Misurina lake, then the toll road past the Antorno lake up to the Rifugio Auronzo at 2,333 m and the south faces of the three peaks. The most expensive drive in this book and, at eight in the morning, worth every euro.
Before you go
Toll EUR 40 per car, 26 per motorcycle, 60 per campervan, and from 2026 a booking is REQUIRED at pass.auronzo.info for a timed 12-hour slot: no booking, no entry. Toll road open 23 May to early October 2026. Shuttle from Dobbiaco to 11 October.
The gate on this one is a booking, and it opened in 2026.
The road to the Rifugio Auronzo under the Tre Cime di Lavaredo costs EUR 40 a car and, since May 2026, cannot be driven without a timed reservation made online beforehand. Every printed guide to the Dolomites still says pay at the booth.
Northern Italy is not the Alps book: hardly any of these roads has a toll, and what stops you is a timetable, a quota, a car-free day or a traffic light with a clock. The full book has 44 roads across Italy, Switzerland and Austria, each drawn against OpenStreetMap and each carrying its own source line, so you can see which rules came from the body that sets them and which are my own reading.
The full book is not on sale yet. This sample is the work so far, and it is complete as far as it goes.