How did the Romans get past the Alps?

The Romans first built a road over the Reschen Pass at 1,504 m to lead to the provincial capital at Augsburg. It was completed around 50 AD. About 100 years later, the trails leading across the Brenner at 1,370 m were improved into a Roman road as well.



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Theodore Ayrault Dodge, writing in the late nineteenth century, argued that Hannibal used the Little St Bernard Pass, but modern historian John Francis Lazenby concluded that Col de Clapier was the pass used by Hannibal.

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The Via Claudia Augusta is an ancient Roman road, which linked the valley of the Po River with Rhaetia (encompassing parts of modern Eastern Switzerland, Northern Italy, Western Austria, Southern Germany and all of Liechtenstein) across the Alps.

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Hannibal invaded Italy by crossing the Alps with North African war elephants. In his first few years in Italy, he won a succession of victories at the Battle of the Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae, inflicting heavy losses on the Romans.

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No one had been granted this honor before. Now that all Gaul had at least nominally submitted to Rome, Caesar spent the winter in Illyricum, but when he had crossed the Alps, the Gauls from Brittany rose against the Romans (56 BCE).

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The famous crossing of the Alps occurred in 218 BC, a period when Carthage and Rome were competing for world dominance. Hannibal traversed the mountains–once thought uncrossable–with a force of more than 30,000 soldiers, 15,000 cavalry and most famous of all – 37 elephants.

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Although Rome had subjugated all Gaul up to the Rhine and much of Illyricum, the Alpine region which separated these possessions from Italy and from each other remained outside Roman control and in the hands of independent mountain tribes.

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Only one of the elephants survived the war, it seems. This was the elephant Hannibal himself had often ridden. Its name, according to the story, was Surus, meaning ''the Syrian.

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Bernina Pass (Passo del Bernina) located on the border between Switzerland and Italy, connecting the alpine resort town St. Moritz with Tirano in Val Poschiavo, is a 365 days a year road.

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Much ink has been spilled in pinpointing the route of Hannibal's improbable five-month, thousand-mile trek from Catalonia across the Pyrenees, through the Languedoc to the banks of the Rhone, and then over the Alps to the plains of Italy.

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