Brenner Pass - History

History

The Romans regularized the already traditional crossing. The first Roman road connecting Italy with the province of Raetia north of the Alps, Via Claudia Augusta, was finished in 46–47 AD, but it did not cross the Brenner. The road started in Verona and followed the Adige valley to the Reschen Pass from where it descended into the Inn valley and from there over the Fern Pass to Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg). Not until the 2nd century AD was a road over the Brenner Pass opened: coming through the Puster Valley, the road crossed the Brenner and descended from there to Veldidena (today Wilten), where it crossed the Inn and then the Zirler Berg towards Partenkirchen and on to Augusta Vindelicorum.

The Alamanni crossed the Brenner Pass southward into Italy in 268 AD, to be stopped in November at the Battle of Lake Benacus. In the High Middle Ages, it was part of the important Via Imperii, an imperial road linking the Kingdom of Germany north of the Alps with the Italian March of Verona, since the 12th century controlled by the Counts of Tyrol. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa usually crossed the Alps through Brenner Pass in his Imperial expeditions into Italy.

The pass however was not more than a trackway for mule trains and carts until a carriage road was laid out in 1777 at the behest of Empress Maria Theresa. The Brenner Railway was completed in 1867 and is the only transalpine rail route without a major tunnel. Since the end of World War I in 1918, when international borders shifted, control of the pass has been shared between Italy and Austria. Until then, both sides of the pass had been within the Habsburg-ruled Austro-Hungarian Empire. During World War II, the German leader Adolf Hitler and the Italian leader Benito Mussolini met there to celebrate their Pact of Steel on 18 March 1940. The pass was a part of the ratlines for some Nazis after the German surrender in 1945.