The opening of the Gotthard and the valley economy

A late pass

The Gotthard is the most direct crossing of the central Alps between the upper Rhine and Milan, yet it was the last of the major passes to be used for regular traffic. Its southern approach through the Leventina posed no special difficulty. The obstacle lay on the northern side, where the Reuss runs through the Schöllenen gorge between Göschenen and Andermatt, a narrow cleft with vertical walls that no mule path could follow. Only when the gorge was made passable, by a bridge over the Reuss and a wooden gallery fixed to the rock face, did the route become practicable for pack animals.¹ The date of these works is not recorded. Historians place them in the early thirteenth century, around 1200 to 1230, which coincides with the construction of a chapel and hospice on the pass and with the first documentary references to the route as a through road.

The name of the pass is itself a medieval product. The chapel on the summit was dedicated to Saint Godehard, bishop of Hildesheim, who had been canonized in 1131, and the pass took its Italian and German names from him.² The dedication to a German saint suggests that the chapel was founded under the influence of the church of Milan and of the imperial interest in the route, which linked the German kingdom with its Italian possessions. The coincidence of the opening of the pass with the charter of 1231 by which Henry VII placed the valley of Uri directly under the empire has often been noted. Although the causal connection is debated, it is clear that the new route turned the small valley on the northern side of the pass into a place of strategic interest to the emperors and to the cities of northern Italy.³

Porterage, corporations and stations

The traffic over the Gotthard was organized by the communities along the route. Goods travelled on the backs of mules and horses, in loads of standard weight, and were handed over at fixed stations from one group of carriers to the next. In the Leventina the carriers were members of the valley communities, and the right to carry goods on a given stretch belonged to the vicinanze of that stretch. The system of relays had the advantage of spreading the income from transport over many communities and of keeping the carriers close to home, so that they could combine transport work with farming. Its disadvantage was delay, since goods waited in warehouses (soste, in German Susten) until the next group of carriers was ready. Merchants in a hurry could buy through-transport by paying a supplement, which gave them a single carrier from one end of the route to the other.⁴

The transport corporations were a form of economic organization that combined public and private law in a manner characteristic of the Alpine valleys. They held a collective monopoly over the carriage of goods on their stretch, they fixed rates by agreement with merchants and lords, and they were liable for loss and damage. Disputes over liability, over delays and over the division of work between neighbouring communities were settled by arbitration or before the valley courts, and the statutes of the Leventina contain detailed provisions on these matters. The regulatory problems that the valley communities faced, such as the balance between monopoly and service, the allocation of liability in a chain of intermediaries and the protection of goods in transit, are recognizable in modern forms in the law of logistics and custody.

Notes

1. DSS, art. "Gotthard" (above), on the bridges in the Schöllenen (the later Devil's Bridge and the Twärrenbrücke) and the opening of the route probably around 1200. ↩
2. DSS, art. "Gotthard" (above), on the chapel dedicated in 1230 to Saint Godehard (canonized 1131) and the name of the pass from 1237; Wikipedia, "Gotthard Pass", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Pass (consulted as a last resort), on its consecration by the archbishop of Milan. ↩
3. DSS, art. "Uri", https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007384/, on the grant of imperial immediacy by King Henry (VII), transmitted in a copy by Aegidius Tschudi whose authenticity modern research partly contests, and on the transformation of Uri into a transit country. ↩
4. DSS, art. "Someggiatura" (above), on relay transport from sosta to sosta and direct transport (Strackfuhr). See Chapter A.IV. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.