Bernina Pass Road Trip: St Moritz to Tirano (2 Days)

Fifty-nine kilometres and two days, which is either absurd or exactly right depending on whether you have driven an Alpine pass before. The Bernina climbs to 2,328 metres, drops 1,900 of them into an Italian valley, and has a UNESCO railway running beside it the whole way — so the stopping is not optional.

Day 1 — St Moritz over the pass to Poschiavo (42 km)

Out of St Moritz through Pontresina and up. The Morteratsch glacier is signposted off to the right, and the walk to its snout is short and gets shorter every decade — there are markers along the path showing where the ice stood in each year, which is the most effective climate exhibit in the Alps.

At the top, Lago Bianco sits on the watershed: water leaving its southern end reaches the Adriatic, water from the lake just north of it ends up in the Black Sea.

Then the descent into Val Poschiavo, where the road switches to Italian-speaking Switzerland and drops through hairpins to Poschiavo itself.

Day 2 — Down to the Brusio spiral and Tirano (17 km)

Short and worth its own day. Below Poschiavo the railway does something no road ever needs to: at Brusio it climbs a circular stone viaduct, looping over itself in the open to gain height. Park and wait for a train — the red ones come through often enough that you will not wait long.

Then the border, and Tirano, where the Swiss narrow-gauge line ends in an Italian street with no fence between the tracks and the traffic.

The pass that does not close

Most Swiss passes shut in October and open again in May. The Bernina does not — it is the highest road pass in the country that stays open close to year-round, kept clear through the winter.

“Close to” is the operative phrase. Winter tyres are obligatory through the winter period, snow chains can be mandatory for short stretches, and in a serious storm the road does close. Check before committing to a winter crossing rather than assuming.

About the Swiss vignette

Switzerland sells only an annual motorway vignette, CHF 40 (approx. €43), with no daily or weekly option — it is an all-or-nothing purchase.

It is worth knowing exactly what it covers: the vignette is required on motorways and expressways, not on ordinary roads, and the Bernina Pass road is an ordinary cantonal road. In practice most approaches to St Moritz use a motorway section somewhere, so you will probably need one anyway — but if you arrive from Tirano and leave the same way, you may not.

What it costs

Use the cost calculator to price fuel and nights for your exact dates. There is no toll on the pass itself. If you would rather not drive it, the Bernina Express covers the same valley on the railway you have been looking at all day.