Passo Giau: Don't Just Drive Over It

Is Passo Giau worth it? Not if you just drive over it

• Worth it, if you walk: Passo Giau is a stop on the classic Dolomites road loop or a day from Cortina d'Ampezzo, 15 km away, never squeezed into a Tre Cime day.
• The walks: about 20 minutes over the meadow to Col Piombin and back the same way, or the Ra Gusela - Nuvolau loop, 5 hours and graded for experts.
• The trap: off Rifugio Nuvolau, the hut on the summit, the direct way down to the pass has a ladder and metal ropes. Walkers come back by Rifugio Averau.
• For sunset and sunrise: sleep at the pass (six rooms, so book when summer 2027 bookings open in March) or in Cortina. The Giau buses were 2026 summer services, with no 2027 season published yet.

Passo Giau, the Giau Pass, is a high grass pass in the Dolomites at 2,236 m, on the Giau road between Cortina d'Ampezzo and Selva di Cadore, in the province of Belluno, Veneto. It earns a slot on a Dolomites trip, just not through a windshield: no photo from the parking lot carries the scale.

Ra Gusela's jagged walls rise right above the pass. From the meadows you look down on the Ampezzo valley and out to the Croda da Lago, the Lastoi de Formin, and Monte Cernera, with the broad saddle of Forcella Giau above the grass. The pass is not in South Tyrol.

The pass sits on the classic Dolomites road loop with Falzarego and Cinque Torri, popular for a reason, and earns a day trip of its own from Val Gardena or a stop on the drive south toward Venice. But mountain roads are slow and tiring, the famous hikes nearby are busy, and Misurina, Tre Cime, and Passo Giau in one day is a fine way to see three parking lots. Base in Cortina, and the pass becomes a morning or an evening.

The sections below take the three ways out of the car in turn: the meadow, a day on foot up to Nuvolau, a night near the pass for the evening and the dawn.

The Giau road from Cortina or Selva, and the parking lot at the top

Passo Giau sits on the Giau road, the SP 638, which climbs from Pocol above Cortina d'Ampezzo and drops to Selva di Cadore. The hotel at the top puts the pass 15 km from Cortina and 12 km from Val Fiorentina, and on this road the map's time estimate is the optimist in the car.

The Selva side climbs in tight hairpins, and the hairpins come with cyclists. The drivers up here are patient and used to them; copy them, and take your time passing. The moment a big SUV starts to hurt is a bus coming the other way on a switchback.

Without a car, the pass was a summer bus ride in 2026. Dolomiti Bus ran a new line 53, Cortina - Passo Giau - Pescul, inside its summer-lines window from June 8 to September 9, and Cortina Express ran a Cortina - Treviso - Venice route over the pass from June 19 to September 9. Neither operator has published a 2027 season yet, so check the timetables before you count on either. Dolomiti Bus posts its seasonal lines and timetables on its seasonal-lines page, in Italian. Its tickets sell in its app, online, at authorized resellers, or on board for a surcharge. Getting from Venice to Cortina without a car is its own puzzle of buses and transfers.

For most of the year, then, Passo Giau is a car trip, and if you are flying in, the airport is the place to pick one up. Take the smallest car that fits your luggage, and from the cold season make sure it has snow tires or chains (the season section below covers the winter road).

Passo Giau parking is a lot at the pass itself, where the trails start; check the signs on the day for any fee. In high season it can get very busy by day, weekends above all, so come early or come late. Late is the better deal, and the evening gets its own section further down.

The meadow walk from the parking lot, and the 1753 border wall

The easy walk from Passo Giau is the meadow path to Col Piombin: about 20 minutes out, graded Easy by Cortina's tourist board, and back the same way. It starts at the car door, which is the whole point.

The path crosses open grazing ground, and from Col Piombin you can carry on to Forcella Giau, 2,360 m. Cows graze across the slope, and with luck a marmot whistles somewhere in the grass. This grass was once worth a border wall.

Cortina and San Vito argued over these pastures until a settlement in 1752, and in 1753 commissioners of the Venetian Republic and the Austrian Empire had the Muraglia di Giau, the Giau Wall, built of stone to keep San Vito's livestock off the Ampezzo meadows. By the board's reckoning it cost over 13,000 gold lire, or 6,800 cows at the time, which up here is the more useful figure.

From the pass, path 443 brings the Bèco de ra Marogna into sight after about 20 minutes, and the wall lies off the path beyond it, running down a grassy clearing toward the road. The Veneto region's tourism portal advises walking the route with an alpine guide. The wall's two plaques, one of the Habsburgs and one of Venice with the lion of St. Mark, sit farther on, below the Crepe di Formin.

After the meadow, the board's own advice is a stop at the hotel restaurant at the top, the Berghotel Passo Giau, which gets its turn after Nuvolau.

Up to Nuvolau: the Ra Gusela loop, and the one way down to avoid

The big hike from Passo Giau is the Ra Gusela - Nuvolau loop, which Cortina's tourist board grades For Experts: about 5 hours and 9.8 km, with 612 m up and down, to the summit hut and back. This is the walk that turns a stop into a day.

Path 443 sets out under Ra Gusela, then 439 runs past Rifugio Scoiattoli, 2,255 m, and Rifugio Averau to the top. Rifugio Nuvolau, 2,575 m, the Cortina area's first hut (1883), has a 360-degree view and is reachable only on foot. It sits on the Alta Via 1; to sleep up there, start with how that trek's huts take bookings. The loop returns via Averau, then path 464 toward Fedare and path 452 to the pass. One way, CAI (the Italian Alpine Club) times the climb at about 2¼ hours by 452, 464, and 439, or about 2¾ hours by 443 and 439, passing Rifugio Cinque Torri.

In July and August, per CAI's hut page, a chairlift from Fedare, on the Colle Santa Lucia side of the pass, rides up to Rifugio Averau, 2,413 m, and Nuvolau is about half an hour beyond. Up top, summer afternoons often bring thunderstorms over open ground, so start early.

With that kit, the Ra Gusela via ferrata is the other way up. It leaves on path 452 behind the hotel and turns from 443 onto 438; the tourist board grades it Easy, about 3 hours with 420 m of climbing, and CAI says proper equipment is needed. From the crossroads below Nuvolau, the Ra Gusela summit, 2,595 m, is a detour of about 15 minutes. If you book a guide, check whether the kit is included or what to rent, and which way the day comes down from Nuvolau.

Rifugio Scoiattoli looks out at the Cinque Torri, and the towers and the walks around them take over from there. Mondeval and Lago Federa make a one-way expert hike from the pass: about 4¼ hours and 12.1 km over the Mondeval plateau, with its view of the Pelmo and the Mondeval Man's burial site, more than 7,500 years old, down to Lago Federa and Ru Curto on the Giau road. The tourist board's plan: park at Ru Curto, ride the summer bus up to the pass, and walk down to your car. Check the Dolomiti Bus timetable.

Hotel Ristorante Passo Giau: lunch at the top, and six rooms

Hotel Ristorante Passo Giau, also called Berghotel Passo Giau, is the hotel and restaurant at the top of the pass: one kitchen and six rooms. The rooms come with a view, which up here is less an amenity than something the building could hardly avoid.

The specialties run on mushrooms, game, mountain herbs, and local cheeses and cured meats. A small in-house pastry shop bakes cakes and cookies every day, served at lunch and at breakfast. The site publishes no season or opening hours, so write ahead through the hotel's contact form before you drive up for lunch.

Sleeping up here is how you get the sunset and the sunrise without a drive in the dark. The hotel takes bookings for summer 2027 from March, and the six rooms go early, so book as soon as the window opens. If they are gone, the fallback is a bed in Cortina, down the Giau road, and with it the drive back up before dawn that a room at the pass would have spared you. When you book, check which way the room faces if the listing says, whether breakfast is included, and the cancellation terms.

Rifugio Nuvolau, the rifugio (a mountain hut with beds and a kitchen) on the summit above the pass, is a higher bed for the dawn, in summer only.

Sunrise and sunset at Passo Giau: the pass after the day traffic

Passo Giau at sunrise and sunset belongs to whoever sleeps at the pass or close by, which is why the beds came first. By evening the day traffic has thinned out, and the parking lot, a scramble on a busy summer day, goes back to being a mountain pass.

Plan it as one evening: there for the sunset, then the night, then the dawn. Sunrise and sunset move across the summer, so look up the times for your date. And pack more warmth than the month suggests. A late-May night up here can drop to about 39°F (4°C), and the wait before first light is where you feel it.

I came up for sunset in September. By 18:00 the day traffic and the motorcycles had gone, I left the car on the roadside at the top, and for most of the 40-minute wait I sat in it with the heater on and tea from a thermos. Outside, in a down jacket and a hat, I was stamping my feet: a cold draft pulls across the pass, and bare fingers go numb in five minutes. About fifteen people with tripods stood in a quiet line along the wooden fence, and all you heard was wind in the grass and shutters. From the grassy rise just right of the little wooden chapel, Ra Gusela took the whole show. Its pale wall turned deep gold, then in the last ten minutes the top flared copper red, almost pink: the enrosadira, the Dolomites' alpenglow, as if the rock were lit from inside. It held for five to seven minutes, and then the stone went ash gray at once.

Once the light goes, the pass turns very quiet. Every so often a cowbell sounds from the meadow, then nothing again for a long while. Later the stars come out over the pass, thick enough to keep you outside longer than you meant. At first light the sun reaches Ra Gusela before it reaches you, and the wall that sat behind the hotel all day like a backdrop takes on its full size.

Higher still, a night at Rifugio Nuvolau, the summit hut, wakes up to mountains on every side, as long as the sky plays along. The price of that dawn is the climb up the day before.

Passo Giau by season: hut months, and snow at both ends of the summer

The huts around Passo Giau open roughly from early June to mid-October, according to the hotel at the top, and each hut sets its own dates. At both ends of that window, snow gets the deciding vote.

Rifugio Nuvolau keeps a narrower window, June 20 - September 20 on CAI's page for the hut, and the page carries no year, so confirm the current season there before you plan the walk up.

In May the pass and its trails can still sit under snow, depending on the year. From late October the high passes, the Giau among them, can pick up an early dusting of snow or ice overnight, worst first thing in the morning, which is the hour a sunrise plan from a Cortina bed puts you on the road.

In winter the hotel says the road is passable with snow tires or chains. For the road on the day, Veneto Strade, the road authority, posts status tables for the mountain passes as PDFs among its Belluno road notices, in Italian. Check the date on the newest one; in the GIAU row, the STATO (status) column reads Aperto (open) or Chiuso (closed).

The hotel's winter page also names a shuttle service to the Fedare and Dolomiti Superski slopes. If skiing is the point of the trip, skiing the slopes around Cortina is where to plan it.

Cycling Passo Giau: the Giro climb from Selva di Cadore

The Passo Giau climb from Selva di Cadore measures 9.9 km at an average 9.3%, with 922 m of gain, a 14% maximum, and 29 hairpins, on the Giro d'Italia's own figures. The Giro first climbed it in 1973 and still remembers 2021, when Egan Bernal attacked in the leader's pink jersey in cold and rain.

For the riders on the Maratona dles Dolomites' long course, 138 km, the Giau is the hardest climb of the day. The 2027 date and the road closure sit in the road section's warning, and the race's site sets out the 2027 conditions of entry.

It is steep but steady: the gradient never turns savage, and it never lets up either. Then the road tops out, the peaks stand in a full circle around you, and it is one of the great rides in these mountains by every measure except the one your legs are taking. The top keeps its own weather: a hot race day can still end in thunder and hail.

On the way down, the hairpins find out whether the tube in a rental bike was fitted by someone who knew how. Check the tires, tubes, and brakes before you drop off the top.

Passo Giau FAQ