Passo di Giau
Pass · 2236 m · Dolomites
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Passo di Giau reaches 2236 m through 29 hairpin bends between Colle Santa Lucia and Cortina d'Ampezzo. A stone wall built here in 1752 marked the Venetian-Habsburg border, its lions of Saint Mark and Habsburg shields still visible. The Giro d'Italia has climbed the pass since 1973, and in 2021 Egan Bernal attacked here in cold rain to seal overall victory.
The border quarrel over these pastures goes back to at least 1331, when San Vito di Cadore and Cortina d'Ampezzo first argued in writing over grazing rights. It hardened into an international dispute after 1511, when Cortina came under Habsburg Austria while San Vito stayed loyal to Venice. The 1752 Treaty of Rovereto let San Vito's herders keep those rights on condition the town build and maintain a boundary wall at its own expense: a dry-stone barrier roughly 2 km long and 1.8 m high, tapering from a 1.5 m base to 0.6 m at the top, that the whole population finished within 90 days. The border it marked held until 1918, when Cortina passed from Austria to the Kingdom of Italy at the end of the First World War.
What you see
From the meadow at the summit, the view opens west to the Pale di San Martino and the Marmolada, north toward Ra Gusela, and east across the valley to the Tofane, Cristallo and Croda da Lago.
Practical
From Selva di Cadore, the climb runs about 10 km at an average 9%, gaining 900 m with almost no flat stretch to recover on.
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