Brenner Pass

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The Brenner Pass (Italian Passo del Brennero) is a mountain pass through the Tyrolean Alps along the border between Austria and Italy, and is one of the principal passes of the Alps. It is the lowest (4,495 ft/1,370 m) and easiest of the Alpine passes, and one of the few in the Tyrol region. For that reason possession of the pass has long been coveted. The Romans regularized the traditional crossing that memorializes the local tribe of the Brennii. The road to the Roman province of Raetia led from Verona and Tridentum (Trent) across the pass down to Oenipons (Innsbruck) following the river Inn and thence to Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg).

Heading southward through the Brenner Pass the Alamanni crossed into Italy in 268, to be stopped in November at the Battle of Lake Benacus. Control of the Brenner was wrested from Verona by Venice in 1178, a vital link to the silver from German mines. The pass was a trackway for mule trains and carts until a carriage road was opened in the 1770s. The railroad was completed in 1867, the only transalpine rail route without a major tunnel. Since 1918, control of the pass has been shared between Italy and Austria. Symbolically, Hitler and Mussolini met here to publicly celebrate their pact on March 18, 1940.

Below the pass, high Alpine pastures have been used by dairy cattle for summer grazing, making space available at lower altitudes for cultivating and harvesting hay for winter fodder. Many of the high pastures are at altitudes over 1,000 meters.

The autobahn (motorway) E 45 (European designation; in Austria also called A 13, in Italy A 22), leading from Innsbruck via Bozen-Bolzano to Verona uses this pass, and is one of the most important north-south connections in Europe. Even with the removal of customs, the long traffic jams before the Brenner Pass are dreaded by Northern Europeans who want to spend their holidays on the Mediterranean coast.

The Europabrücke (Bridge Europe), a few kilometers north of the Brenner, is a large concrete bridge carrying the six-lane autobahn over the valley of the Sill River at a height of 180 m. 820 metres long, it was celebrated as a masterpiece of engineering on completion in 1963.

The heavy freight traffic travelling through the Inn valley to reach the Brenner, polluting this scenic area, causes much debate in regional and European politics. About 1.8 million trucks crossed the Europa Bridge in 2004 [1].

In order to ease the road traffic, there are plans to upgrade the railroad from Verona to Innsbruck with a series of tunnels, including one Brenner Basistunnel under the Brenner Pass [2]. Start of work is planned for 2006.

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