Brenner Autobahn Eastern Alps; this favourable location was therefore suitable for building the first motorway crossing among the Alpine main chains. Unlike other higher passes across the Alps, the Brenner Pass remains open all-year round and through the winter months. Construction of the motorway began in 1959 and the "Brenner Autobahn", including the Bridge of Europe (Europe's highest motorway bridge then), was partially open in 1963. The A13 begins in the south of Innsbruck from the east-west motorway A12 Inntal Autobahn ("Inn Valley Motorway"), which links Bregenz in western Austria to Kufstein near the border of Bavaria in Germany. At above sea,
Brenner Pass to the German word for somebody who clears woodland. A name for the pass itself appears for the first time in 1328 as "ob dem Prenner" (German for "above the Prenner"). The Romans regularised the mountain pass at Brenner, which had already been under frequent use during the prehistoric eras since the most recent Ice Age. Brenner Pass, however, was not the first trans-Alpine Roman road to become regularised under the Roman Empire. The first Roman road to cross the Alpine range, Via Claudia Augusta, connected Verona in northern Italy with Augusta Vindelicorum (modern-day Augsburg) in the Roman province of