Switzerland has a couple of beautiful mountain passes to offer. Among these is the legendary Furka Pass, which has become especially famous for the hotspot “Hotel Belvédère”. Find out all about the pass, the hotel and the Rhone Glacier with its famous ice grotto here.
Fast Fact
A part of the pass was used as a filming location for the car chase in the James Bond film Goldfinger.
The Furka Pass
Over a length of 29 kilometres, the pass connects the canton of Valais with the canton of Uri. The maximum gradient along the pass is 11% and the peak is at an altitude of 2,429 metres. The pass itself is toll-free. The road is well paved, but in some sections it is quite narrow, so that it cannot be crossed by two vehicles at the same time. During the winter months, the Furkas Pass is closed. This closure usually lasts from October to May. However, it might be temporarily closed in other months as well. At 2,429 metres, the pass is situated fairly high, so the risk of snow cannot be entirely avoided. It is therefore recommended to check on the internet before setting off to see what the weather is like locally and whether the pass is passable.
Hotel Belvédère
The Hotel Belvédère next to the Rhone Glacier is indeed not only a popular photo motif. Opened in 1882 on the occasion of the completion of the Furka road, the hotel experienced its golden age at the beginning of the 19th century. At that time, it was converted into an upscale mountain hotel that mainly attracted wealthy tourists. It then accommodates up to 90 guests. Both adventurers and those seeking peace and quiet stayed overnight. While drinking coffee on the hotel terrace, guests could gaze at the glacier, which was only a few hundred metres away from the road.
A few years later, the invention of the car changed things. As the car became more and more established, the hotel became less and less interesting as a place to stay, especially since it was now easy to complete the Furka Pass in one day. The Rhone Glacier had meanwhile receded by more than a kilometre, and the view from the terrace was less spectacular. Thus, in the 1980s, the Belvédère was closed for the first time. Ten years later, a new owner continued to run it as a mountain hotel and pushed hard to restore the building to its original condition. It has been permanently closed since 2015.
The Rhone Glacier
In the 19th century and even up to the beginning of the 20th century, the glacier in the upper reaches of the Rhone extended to the valley floor before Gletsch, occasionally as far as the windows of the Grand Hotel Glacier du Rhône. Although the glacier appears white-grey, it glows in enchanting, fine shades of blue in the approximately 100-metre-long ice tunnel.
