Can hairpin bends and tunnels be considered works of art? Can we consider streets and buildings akin to monuments? Roads and engineering works such as bridges and tunnels always have a practical function to perform, but there is also, undeniably, an artistic and aesthetic component to which every one of us cycling fans, in the most virtuous cases, definitely pays attention.
Who designed this road?- one wonders as we pedal round sun-drenched hairpin bends alternating with dark tunnels carved into the rock or the chiaroscuro structures built to protect the roadway from falling boulders and avalanches.
Some roads rather than inanimate building works appear to us as genuine works of art set harmoniously in the natural context. When viewed from the outside, the road and the surrounding environment in the most virtuous cases appear as a single entity and reveal their unequivocal link with the designer and human genius. When a thoroughfare is artfully constructed, where architecture and nature coexist harmoniously in the landscape, a road can indeed become a monument. Some monuments can be admired in museums or squares, some you can cycle on.
Unlike statues and works of art, very rarely are we aware of the name of the engineer or architect who designed a given road. A road is not just a strip of asphalt surface connecting one place to another, but rather a stretch of shared space that creates communion between cultures, environments and people, and that must be thought out taking into account an infinite number of factors, which are not only topographical and technical in nature.
A true champion in road design and construction was the Italian Carlo Donegani, a road engineer born in Brescia who lived between 1775 and 1845 and who bequeathed us some of the most beautiful roads in the Alps. Commissioned by Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, he built legendary roads such as the Stelvio Pass between Bormio and Trafoi, or the Splügen Pass in the Sengio variant, the latter a sequence of five kilometres of tunnels, straights carved into the rock and hairpin bends, a true stylistic apotheosis in the field of road engineering. A true genius in road construction, Donegani argued that “architecture and engineering must adapt harmoniously to nature, striving to overcome its roughness and obstacles permanently.”
Many of the roads designed and built by Donegani have truly been legendary feats from the very design stages owing to the difficult task of tackling the natural environment in all its hardness and difficulty. Building almost two hundred years ago (the works took place between 1820 and 1825) a carriage road that passed through the yoke of the Stelvio, at unprecedented altitudes all the way to the tongue of a glacier, was a veritable challenge to the elements and nature.
Tunnels and hairpin bends are lines of passage that cannot be found in nature, the result of an evolved architectural thought. Cycling along a winding road dotted with hairpin bends, along long sloping straights on the side of a mountain, is not only enjoyable; it also pays tribute to the human genius and work of many workers.
The construction of the Stelvio Pass road began on 26th June 1820, starting from the centre of Bormio and continuing towards Bagni Vecchi, where a wooden bridge and the first tunnel were built. From here, it climbs the inaccessible Braulio Valley up to the pass at 2758 metres above sea level, ingenious technical solutions were put in place, such as the construction of 34 hairpin bends, some tunnels dug into the rock and numerous wooden avalanche guards. There were 48 hairpin bends built on the South Tyrolean side.
2025 will be the year to celebrate the two-hundred year anniversary of the Stelvio Pass road, while the Splügen Pass road, inaugurated a few years in advance, has already celebrated this anniversary. If you haven't climbed them yet, then this is the right time to follow Carlo Donegani's trail and plan your ascent to these two Alpine passes, on two of the most beautiful and legendary roads in the entire Alps.
