The first mountain stage of the 2026 Giro d’Italia finishes on top of a mountain with a strange name. Chris Sidwells takes a look at its history in a special long read for the Giro.
The 2026 Giro d’Italia will have an interesting start in Bulgaria but will really explode once back in Italy. Stage 7 starts in Formia on the Lazio coast, halfway between Naples and Rome, and ends 244-slogging kilometres away on top of a formidable mountain called Blockhaus.
Blockhaus is part of the Majella-massif in Abruzzo, Central Italy. It’s 2,145 metres high, so stage 7 literally goes from sea to the sky, but why the Germanic name? Why Blockhaus? It’s simply coincidence, and not to any past alliance between Italy and Germany.
The name is Germanic and describes a small defensive fort, which in the case of this mountain was built in the 1800s to police anti-bandit operations that grew here after Italian unification. The explanation we came across for the name was the fort’s commander was of Austro-Hungarian heritage, and he referred to it as a Blockhaus and the name stuck. However, if you know for certain please tell us.
Anyway, enough history- let’s get onto cycling, and in this Cycling Legends Media Big Read we’ll look at some of the men who have mastered the climb, it wasn’t used in the women’s Giro until 2024, starting with a very young (21) Eddy Merckx.
Read about Eddy Merckx, Franco Bitossi and Jose-Manuel Fuente's battles on the Blockhaus on our website -
cyclinglegends.co.uk/blogs/l…