Furka Pass — mountain pass
Image by hpgruesen from Pixabay

Furka Pass

Furkapass

  • Elevation2,429 m
  • 2 min read
  • 46.573° N 8.417° E

Interesting facts

  • The pass lies on the European watershed: water on one side flows via the Rhône to the Mediterranean, on the other via the Reuss and Rhine to the North Sea.
  • Its name comes from the Latin furca, a two-pronged fork.
  • The pass was already crossed in Roman times, and from the 13th century mule trains carried salt, wine, hides and grain over it.
  • The federal government paid two-thirds of the cost of the 1864–1866 road, designed by the Geneva officer and mathematician Jean-Louis Aubert.
  • Official maps put the summit at 2,429 metres, but the sign on the pass still shows 2,436 metres, a figure taken from the old Siegfried map.
  • At 2,160 metres, the old Furka summit tunnel is the highest railway tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland.
  • At nearly 18 km, the volunteer-run Furka steam line is the longest non-electrified railway operated in Switzerland.
  • Where the steam railway crosses a main road, its rack rail is retracted and raised by radio signals from the locomotive, together with the crossing barriers.
  • Through a forested nature reserve, the steam trains switch on sprinklers by radio before and after they pass, as a guard against fire.
  • Scenes of Goldfinger with Sean Connery and Gert Fröbe were filmed on the pass road in 1964.

Why it is worth it

The Furka Pass carries a road over the high Alps between Gletsch in the canton of Valais and Realp in Uri, cresting at 2,429 metres. It is one of the classic Swiss mountain roads, and its fame rests on what it lets you see: on the western side, the road climbs in tight loops beside the Rhône Glacier, the source of the Rhône, and every bend opens a new view down to the valley floor at Gletsch.

The road was built in the 1860s, largely for military reasons, and its switchbacks are the reason drivers and cyclists seek it out. Near the top, set right in one of the hairpins, stands the Hotel Belvédère, built in 1882, its sharp profile on the very edge of the bend one of the most photographed sights in the Alps. The pass reached cinemas worldwide as a location in the James Bond film Goldfinger, and one curve still carries the name James-Bond-Strasse. Close by, an ice grotto is cut into the glacier: because the ice moves 30 to 40 metres a year, the hundred-metre tunnel and chamber have to be carved anew each season.

Below the road runs a second way across. The Furka mountain railway opened in 1925 and was abandoned in 1981, when a base tunnel took the trains under the mountain. The old line was revived as the Furka Steam Railway, coming back to life in stages from 1992 until the whole route from Realp to Oberwald via Gletsch was back in service in 2010. Running on a metre-gauge Abt rack, with gradients of up to 11.8 per cent and a summit tunnel at about 2,160 metres, it is one of Europe's highest rail crossings. Among its engines are steam locomotives built in Switzerland for Vietnam and brought home for restoration, and one of its bridges, the Steffenbach bridge, is taken down every autumn before the winter snows.

Both road and railway are seasonal, open only in the snow-free months of summer and early autumn.

Getting there

The pass lies between Gletsch and Realp, roughly 50 km from Domodossola across the Italian border and a similar distance from Kriens near Lucerne. The nearest airport is Lugano Airport (LUG), about 74 km away. Outside the summer season, trains pass under the mountain through the Furka base tunnel between Realp and Oberwald. In summer the road can be driven from Realp in the east or from Gletsch in the Rhône valley, and the heritage steam train runs between Realp and Oberwald.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Switzerland 44The Most Spectacular Mountain Passes 12The Greatest Engineering Wonders in Switzerland 21The Greatest Engineering Wonders 271

From the encyclopaedia

Furka Pass is a 2,429 m (7,969 ft) high mountain pass in the southern Swiss Alps connecting Gletsch, Valais with Realp, Uri via the seasonal Furkapassroute. The Furka Oberalp Bahn bypasses the pass through the 1,390 m (4,560 ft) high Furka Base Tunnel, which opened in 1982 to replace the seasonal Furka Summit Tunnel at 2,160 metres (7,090 ft).

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