Kreuzbergpass - Passo Monte Croce di Comelico
Pass · 1636 m · Dolomites
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Two ranges meet on this saddle, the Dolomites to the west and the Carnic Alps to the northeast, and the pass itself is the line between them. At 1636 m it lifts you out of the Puster Valley and lets you down into Cadore, crossing from South Tyrol into Belluno on the way.
The road over the pass is ancient: the Romans routed the Via Claudia Augusta Altinate here, using it to link their world with the Germanic lands to the north. That strategic value turned the pass into a front line during the First World War, when it marked the border between Italy and Austria-Hungary. Fortifications built around Sesto in the 1880s were shelled and partly destroyed in the fighting, and old boundary stones from the border era still stand at the summit. A generation later, Italy added bunkers nearby at Creston Popera as part of the Alpine Wall raised against a possible German invasion. None of that history troubles the saddle today, where a small chapel and a hotel restaurant mark the top.
What you see
Cima Undici and Monte Popera wall the pass to the west, and Col Quaternà rises green to the east, marking where the pale rock of the Dolomites gives way to the Carnic Alps.
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