The Alpine passes and the shape of the transit business

The Bündner passes: Septimer, Splügen and San Bernardino

Long before Zurich existed as a town the Alps were crossed, the passes of Graubünden being among the oldest routes. The HLS article on transit traffic notes that long-distance trade across Swiss territory is attested from prehistoric times. The Septimer, Julier and Maloja in Graubünden and the Great St Bernard in the Valais were early documented crossings, the article continues, and in the late Middle Ages the Splügen, the San Bernardino, the Gotthard and the Simplon were added to them.¹ Around the passes there grew up genuine transit routes with their own infrastructure of hospices, inns, carriers’ cooperatives, tolls and escort arrangements.²

For the merchant coming from Zurich the Bündner passes began at Chur. From there the “upper road” led via the Lenzerheide or the Julier to the Septimer and down the Bregaglia to Chiavenna. The “lower road” led via Thusis, the Viamala gorge and Splügen either over the Splügen pass to Chiavenna or over the San Bernardino into the Misox and on to Bellinzona. From Chiavenna the route continued along Lake Como to Como and Milan. The Septimer was the traditional Rhaetian pass. Evidence from the summit shows Roman use, while the late antique Itinerarium Antonini records a road that can only correspond to the Septimer or Julier route.³ From 960 onwards the bishop of Chur controlled the pass, after King Otto I had granted him the Bregaglia with its toll rights. In 1209 King Otto IV freed the dependants of the Septimer hospice from tax and lodging obligations, a measure that reflects the importance of the crossing.⁴

The most ambitious medieval attempt to improve a Bündner pass concerned the Septimer. In 1387 Bishop Johannes Ministri of Chur contracted with Jakob von Castelmur to build a paved road from Tinizong to Plurs capable of taking wagons, which would have transformed a mule track into a cart road. The HLS article on the pass observes laconically that the small road soon appears to have reverted to a pack trail.⁵ The episode shows both the ambition of the actors and the limits of medieval engineering and finance in the high mountains. It also shows who took the initiative: a territorial lord with toll rights, investing in the expectation that more traffic would mean more revenue.

The Splügen gained importance with the permanent settlement of the upper Val San Giacomo in the thirteenth century. A peace treaty of 1219 between the valley community of Schams and Chiavenna aimed to restore safety on the Splügen route, and stipulated that travellers could move freely with their goods from the Viamala to the pass.⁶ The decisive change came in 1473, when the Viamala gorge was opened up for pack traffic. According to the HLS article on the Septimer, this expansion diverted transit traffic to the lower route via the Splügen and the San Bernardino, after which the Septimer lost significance.⁷ The article on the Splügen records that the Splügen route already collected considerable revenue by 1396. For Zurich, the choice between the Bündner passes was of secondary importance, since all of them were reached through Chur and therefore through the Walensee corridor. What mattered to the city was that the corridor to Chur remained open.

The Gotthard opening and the route via Horgen

The Gotthard was the latecomer among the major passes. Its northern approach was blocked by the Schöllenen gorge above Göschenen, which remained impassable until the twelfth century. According to the HLS, the Schöllenen was probably made passable around 1200, a dating supported by the first documented crossing of the Gotthard in 1234 and by the earliest carriers’ statutes, from Osco in the Leventina, of 1237, the year in which a hospice on the pass is also documented.⁸ The HLS attributes an important role to the Walser, who had moved into the Urseren valley via the Furka in the twelfth century and brought with them techniques of bridge and path building. The bridge over the Reuss, the “stiebende Brücke” or “spraying bridge”, was called the Devil’s Bridge only from the sixteenth century onwards.

The opening of the Gotthard created the shortest route between the Rhine at Basel and Milan. It made the Lake of Lucerne a transit waterway, gave Uri and Lucerne a commercial interest in the pass and, through the imperial interest in the route, contributed to the political history of the early Confederation. Its volume, however, should not be exaggerated. For the period 1493 to 1503 the HLS gives a figure of about 170 tonnes of goods a year, carried by some 852 pack animals, far less than the roughly 4,500 tonnes that crossed the Brenner. It also notes that the Gotthard did not reach such volumes before the opening of its carriage road in the 1830s.⁹ The Gotthard was a pass of high value and modest weight: silk, spices, fine cloth, metal wares and, from the south, rice and wine.

Zurich reached the Gotthard overland via Zug and the Lake of Lucerne, by a route over Horgen that became the Zurich route par excellence. Goods were shipped from Zurich along the lake to Horgen and there transferred to pack animals, which climbed over the Hirzel to the Sihl and down to Zug. From there they went by water on the Lake of Zug to Immensee or Arth and over the short land stage to Küssnacht or Brunnen on the Lake of Lucerne. The HLS dates the opening of the Horgen Sust to 1452.¹⁰ The local museum now housed in the Sust building gives a more cautious chronology. The building’s first documentary mention dates from 1527, when Zurich acquired a house there, while dendrochronological analysis dates the oldest timbers to the winters of 1476/77 and 1478/79, and documents suggest a transshipment point from the fourteenth century.¹¹ The two chronologies can be reconciled: a transshipment point existed early, an organised Sust under Zurich control was established in the mid-fifteenth century, and the building now standing incorporates later campaigns. The carriers’ ordinance for the Hirzel of 1482, listed by the HLS among the early carriers’ ordinances of Switzerland, shows that by then Zurich was regulating the land stage of its Gotthard route.¹²

The importance of the Gotthard route to Zurich is also visible in constitutional documents. The Pfaffenbrief of 7 October 1370, concluded by Zurich, Lucerne, Zug, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden after an assault by the Zurich provost Bruno Brun on the Lucerne magistrate Petermann von Gundoldingen, subjected clergy who were not citizens to the secular courts in most matters. It also guaranteed a road peace, the Strassenfrieden, between the Gotthard and Zurich.¹³ Here, in one of the founding texts of Confederate public law, the security of a trade road is placed alongside the ordering of jurisdiction. The Pfaffenbrief treated the route from the pass to the Zurich city gate as a common Confederate concern because the commercial interests of Zurich and Lucerne and the carrying interests of Uri and Schwyz coincided.

The relationship between the Gotthard and the Bündner passes was therefore complex. For goods from the Rhineland and the Low Countries travelling to Milan, the Gotthard via Basel and Lucerne was often the shortest road, and Zurich could be bypassed altogether. For goods from Upper Germany, from the Lake of Constance and from Zurich itself, the Walensee corridor and the Bündner passes were the natural route, and Zurich lay squarely on it. Zurich’s transit function thus depended on the eastern corridor to a greater extent than on the Gotthard, a fact that explains the intensity with which the city pursued its interests in the Toggenburg inheritance.

Carriers, Porten and Susten

The organisation of traffic over the passes was as important as the physical road. According to the HLS article on pack-animal transport, the Three Leagues of Graubünden knew five carriers’ associations along the main routes before the sixteenth century. These Porten organised carriers who served in a fixed rotation, called the Rod, under the direction of officials known as Teiler or Sustmeister. As an alternative there developed the Strackfuhr, in which a single carrier took the goods to their destination without reloading.¹⁴ On the Splügen route, the Viamala letter of 1473 documented the Porten as cooperatives of peasant carriers who transported merchandise in stages. Five transfers were required between Chur and Chiavenna under the Rodfuhr, although express goods could travel direct.¹⁵ The fees charged, the Fürleite, were meant to compensate for road maintenance and transport rights and were collected by the Teiler, often at the hospices.

The system reflected the economics of mountain communities. The carriers were peasants who combined agriculture with transport and who insisted on their share of the traffic, which the rotation system spread across the community while keeping outsiders out. For the merchant, it meant delays, repeated handling and repeated charges, which he tried to avoid by negotiating Strackfuhr arrangements or by choosing another pass. Competition between passes and between valley communities was therefore a constant feature of the transit business, giving the local lords and communities every reason to keep their charges moderate and their roads in repair.

At the points of transfer stood the Susten. The HLS defines the Sust, a word related to the Italian sosta, as a storage building for transit goods, found mainly in Switzerland from the late thirteenth century until the railway era. Susten served for the short-term storage of transit goods and for their transfer between pack animals, carts and boats, and were frequently equipped with scales and associated with toll collection.¹⁶ While a Sustmeister administered the building and collected the fee, carriers’ cooperatives moved goods “from Sust to Sust”. The oldest documented Susten date from 1272, at Leuk and Martigny. In the fourteenth century networks existed on the Gotthard route, with a Sust at Flüelen attested in 1309, and on the Bündner passes. North of the Alps, transshipment Susten stood at Horgen, Zug, Immensee and Küssnacht on the salt route.¹⁷

The Sust is a small but telling institution for the history of a financial centre. It was a public warehouse in which goods belonging to foreign merchants were held in trust for a short period, weighed, recorded and released against payment of a fee. The Sustmeister, who answered to the authority that owned the building, was responsible for their safekeeping and kept accounts. In Horgen, according to the museum’s account, the keeper later received five per cent of the toll collected as his compensation. From 1623 Zurich also required a Sustbüchlein documenting daily operations.¹⁸ Custody, record-keeping, fee income and public supervision: the elements of a trust business were present in the transit trade long before anybody in Zurich spoke of banking.

Notes

1. Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, “Transitverkehr”, in: HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/014051/: “Im Spätmittelalter kamen der Splügenpass, der San Bernardino, der Gotthardpass und der Simplonpass hinzu.” ↩
2. Schiedt, “Transitverkehr”, HLS (as above). ↩
3. Jürg Simonett, “Septimerpass”, in: HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/008815/. ↩
4. Simonett, “Septimerpass”, HLS (as above). ↩
5. Simonett, “Septimerpass”, HLS (as above): “Das Strässchen über den Septimerpass scheint allerdings bald wieder zum Saumweg geworden zu sein.” ↩
6. “Splügenpass”, in: HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/008823/2013-01-10/, citing the formula “from Viamala usque ad Spelugam”. ↩
7. Simonett, “Septimerpass”, HLS (as above). ↩
8. “Gotthardpass”, in: HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007466/2016-08-30/: “wurde die Schöllenen wahrscheinlich um 1200 passierbar gemacht”. ↩
9. “Gotthardpass”, HLS (as above). These figures derive from toll records and represent orders of magnitude for goods subject to the relevant toll. ↩
10. Ziegler, “Zürichsee”, HLS (as above). ↩
11. “Ortsmuseum Sust”, German Wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortsmuseum_Sust. The article also describes a pack-animal track of about fifteen kilometres from the harbour over the hill to the Sihl, which could be covered in a day. Cited for orientation. ↩
12. Hans Stadler, “Säumerei”, in: HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/014053/2012-06-18/, listing ordinances of 1237 (Osco), 1310 (Leuk), 1363 (Urseren), 1383 (Uri), 1391 (Septimer), 1473 (Splügen) and 1482 (Hirzel). ↩
13. Carl Pfaff, “Pfaffenbrief”, in: HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/009803/. The HLS interprets the letter as an expression of the authorities’ intent to enforce their territorial rule, marking a transition from a personal to a territorial understanding of law. ↩
14. Stadler, “Säumerei”, HLS (as above): “Sie leisteten ihren Dienst nach einer festen Kehrordnung, der sogenannten Rotation oder Rod, auf Anweisung der Teiler oder Sustmeister.” ↩
15. “Splügenpass”, HLS (as above). ↩
16. Fritz Glauser, “Susten”, in: HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007968/2011-04-18/: “Susten dienten der kurzfristigen Lagerung von Transitgütern.” ↩
17. Glauser, “Susten”, HLS (as above). ↩
18. “Ortsmuseum Sust”, German Wikipedia (as above). The later practice is cited to illustrate the long continuity of the institution. ↩

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 September 2025.