During the Middle Ages, this, the Great St. Bernard, and the Brenner Passes were the preferred routes over the Alps for traveling emperors.

[1][2] The nearest inhabited localities on the approaches of the Septimer Pass are Casaccia on the south and Bivio on the north.

It was mentioned in documents for the following millennium, even though it was abandoned in the tenth century and rebuilt at the beginning of the eleventh.

)[6] During the Middle Ages the Septimer Pass was crucial to the temporal power of the Bishopric of Chur,[2] whose extensive territories until the fourteenth century included Chiavenna.

In 1236 the St. Gotthard Pass opened, allowing traffic from Lucerne to Milan, which diverted merchants from going through Chur.