The
Gotthard Pass or
St. Gotthard Pass (Italian:
Passo del San Gottardo; German:
Gotthardpass) at 2,106 m (6,909 ft) is a mountain pass in the Alps traversing the
Saint-Gotthard Massif 
and connecting northern
Switzerland 
with southern Switzerland. The pass lies between
Airolo 
in the Italian-speaking canton of
Ticino 
, and
Andermatt 
in the German-speaking
Canton of Uri 
, and connects further
Bellinzona 
and
Lugano 
to
Lucerne 
,
Basel 
, and Zürich. The Gotthard Pass lies at the heart of the
Gotthard, a major transport axis of Europe, and it is crossed by three traffic tunnels, each being the world's longest at the time of their construction: the Gotthard Rail Tunnel (1882), the
Gotthard Road Tunnel 
(1980) and the
Gotthard Base Tunnel 
(2016). With the
Lötschberg 
to the west, the Gotthard is one of the two main north-south routes through the
Swiss Alps 
.
Since the Middle Ages, transit across the Gotthard played an important role in Swiss history, the region north of the Gotthard becoming the nucleus of the Swiss Confederacy in the 13th century, after the pass became a vital trade route between Northern and Southern Europe.