Rhaetian Railway in the Albula / Bernina Landscapes

Trains here corkscrew through spiral tunnels, cross dizzying stone viaducts and climb some of the steepest adhesion grades in railway travel. The Albula line, opened in 1904 with 42 tunnels and 144 bridges packed into 67 km, and the Bernina line, which crests its namesake pass before descending to Tirano in Italy, were inscribed by UNESCO in 2008 — engineering masterpieces that ended the isolation of Alpine valleys while settling gracefully into the mountain landscape.