Timmelsjoch celebrates its 50th anniversary with a new Pass Museum

11. September 2009

The Timmelsjoch High Alpine Road, the highest of its kind connecting the provinces of North and South Tyrol, rises to an altitude of 2,509 metres.

It was inaugurated on 17th July 1959, and today it is still regarded as a pioneering achievement in Tyrolean road construction.
Among the 300 invited guests who came from “both sides” to celebrate the 50-year milestone were the Governor of North Tyrol, Günther Platter, and his South Tyrolean counterpart, Luis Durnwalder, as well as all the Mayors from the villages in the Ötztal valley and the Passeiertal valley, leading tourism professionals from both valleys and those workers who are still alive who were involved in the monumental project. As a symbol of the unity between North and South Tyrol, a memorial stone was unveiled by marksmen from both the Ötztal valley and the Passeiertal valley with the inscription “What friendship has joined together, politics cannot divide”.

Highlight of the celebration was, undoubtedly, the dedication of the new Pass Museum, the foundations of which are on the North Tyrolean side, but which symbolically protrudes 16 metres into South Tyrol. The museum pays tribute to the achievements of the pioneers of road construction, in particular to the work of Angelus Scheiber, Member of State Government Hermann Egger, (at that time) Member of State Government Eduard Wallnöfer, Valentin Falkner and the manual workers involved in the project. The Pass Museum is the first of five cross-border architectural sculptures which are due to be built along the Timmelsjoch High Alpine Road by 2011. With this worldwide unique venture, new, border-breaking paths are once again being forged, just as they were 50 years ago. Originator of the project is the renowned South Tyrolean architect Werner Tscholl who was also responsible for breathing new life into Reinhold Messner’s Sigmundskron Museum.