Splügen is where the Rhine, still a young and rather modest river, runs through the high Rheinwald valley in Graubünden, and the village has been a waystation for as long as people have wanted to get over the Alps. Two passes leave from here: the Splügen itself, 2,113 metres, which drops to Italy and the Valle San Giacomo, and the San Bernardino, 2,066 metres, which heads south into Ticino. Choosing between them at the village fountain is one of the nicer decisions in the Alps.
The village is compact and handsome. Tall stone houses, some with painted fronts, crowd narrow lanes, and the old merchants' warehouses recall the days when mule trains and wagons carried goods over the pass and the village earned its living by feeding and housing the carriers. The Splügen road itself was rebuilt as a proper carriage route in the early nineteenth century, an Austrian-era engineering effort to keep trade flowing toward Milan, and you can still sense that ambition in the tidy masonry of the hairpins above the Italian border. The valley above is Walser country, settled by German-speaking migrants from the Valais centuries ago, and place names and farmhouses carry that story.
Riding up the Splügen from here is a steady build rather than a rush. The first stretch climbs through meadow and larch to the dam at Sufers, then the road ramps up to the Italian side, where a run of tightly stacked hairpins drops toward Chiavenna and the first palms and chestnut trees of the south. It is a pass for riders who like precision: narrow in places, with short sight lines and stone walls close to the edge. The San Bernardino is the easier sibling, faster and smoother, and a tunnel carries the motorway beneath it, which keeps the old road quiet.
Practically, Splügen is small, so do not count on a petrol station at the moment you need one. Thusis, down the valley, is the more reliable bet northbound, and Chiavenna waits on the Italian side. Both passes close in winter, usually from around November to May, and snow can linger on shaded bends well into June. Bring a layer even in July; the Rheinwald sits high and the air cools quickly when the sun goes behind the ridge.