Col de Turini at Dawn — Why We Drive It at 5am

The Col de Turini is the great driving road of the Côte d’Azur, and we save it for the last morning of the 3-day tour — driven before sunrise, before breakfast, before the 11am flight home. This is what’s special about it, and how we structure that last morning.

TL;DR

• What: A 1,604m mountain pass in the Maritime Alps, 60 minutes north of Monaco.
• Length: ~30 km from the foothills to the summit, depending on approach.
• When we drive it: Day 4 of the Côte d’Azur tour, 5am start, back at the hotel by 7am.
• Why dawn: Empty road. Pink light. Perfect last morning.
• Cars: Porsche 911 (preferred) or Mercedes-AMG SL63.
• WRC heritage: The famous Monte Carlo Rally night stage.

The road itself

The Col de Turini connects two villages — Sospel on the southern side, La Bollène-Vésubie on the northern. The classic driver’s route is up from Sospel and back down the same way, summit-stop-return — about 60km round trip from Monaco.

The road is narrow. In the tightest hairpins it’s one-and-a-half cars wide and a slow oncoming vehicle requires one of you to find a lay-by. The surface is patched — repairs from winter — but the grip is excellent. The corners are tight: most are 20-30 km/h apex speeds, and there are about 40 of them between the foothills and the summit.

What makes it special as a driving road is the rhythm. It’s not a fast road. It’s a technical road. You commit to a line, you hold it, you transition. You’re never out of second or third gear. The 911 is the right tool — the chassis matters more than the horsepower, and the short wheelbase rewards the tighter switchbacks.

The summit itself is a small village — Col de Turini — with a café, a chapel, a few houses. By 6am the café is opening. You drink an espresso, take photographs of the valley below, then descend.

Why we drive it at dawn

This is the part that makes our tour different.

At 5:00am, we meet in the Monte Carlo Bay lobby. The hotel does coffee. Engines on at 5:15. The drive out of Monaco is empty — no Casino traffic, no tour buses — and we’re on the autoroute A8 heading west by 5:25.

At 5:50am, we exit and start the climb from Sospel. The valley is in shadow. The light is grey-blue. The road is yours. There is nothing — no traffic, no cyclists, no construction. You drive at the pace the road wants you to drive.

At 6:30am, we summit. The sun has just touched the eastern ridges. The café is opening. We drink coffee at the tables outside. The peaks above are pink. The valley below is in shadow. Photographs.

At 7:00am, we descend. The light is now in the valley too. We’re back at Monte Carlo Bay by 7:30.

At 8:00am, full breakfast.

At 9:00am, the VIP airport shuttle leaves for Nice.

At 11:00am, wheels up to Tel Aviv.

The whole thing — coffee, drive, summit, return — is two and a half hours. You’re back in time for breakfast, packed and showered and on the way to the airport without rushing. And the photograph of you and your car at the Col de Turini summit at 6:30am, with the pink Maritime Alps behind you, is the one your friends will see.

The WRC heritage

Col de Turini has been a stage of the Monte Carlo Rally since the 1960s. The pass features in the rally most years — often as the famous night stage (Étape de nuit), run after dark in winter conditions. The list of names who have run this pass at full attack is the list of names: Walter Röhrl, Henri Toivonen, Juha Kankkunen, Tommi Mäkinen, Sébastien Loeb, Sébastien Ogier.

Driving it on a summer dawn at normal road pace, with the road empty and dry, you are still tracing the same sequence of hairpins they ran in snow at night. There is no other public road in Europe with this lineage.

What can go wrong

Weather. This is a 1,600m pass. We’ve had clear nights in Monaco turn to fog at 1,200m. Bring a layer. If the pass is fogged in, we abort and drive the lower Sospel valley instead — still beautiful, less iconic.

The descent. Going down a tight mountain pass cold is the most accident-prone moment of any drive. Brakes haven’t warmed, tyres haven’t warmed, the surface is dewy. We descend on engine braking and gentle throttle for the first ten minutes. The day this matters is the day you arrive at the airport on time.

Other drivers (later in the morning). By 7:30am the cyclists are out. By 8:30 the motorcycles. If we run late, we share the road. Part of why we start at 5.

When you can drive it yourself

The pass is open year-round, but in winter it’s snow-covered and the WRC organisers love it for that reason. For a Porsche or Mercedes road drive, the practical season is April through October. In July and August the daytime tourist traffic is heavy — dawn is the only way to have it to yourself.

If you’re staying in Monaco or Nice on your own and want to do this drive, the route from Monaco is: A8 west, exit 59 (Sospel), follow the D2566 north into the valley, then the D70 up to the summit. Allow 90 minutes round trip from Monaco at a relaxed pace.

Where this sits in the tour

The Col de Turini is the closer of our 3-day Côte d’Azur long-weekend. The full rhythm: Sunday arrive Nice → Place du Casino → Monte Carlo Bay → dinner. Monday: drive to St Tropez, lunch at Shellona. Tuesday: drive to San Remo, lunch at Trattoria a Ciassa, Jimmy’z that night. Wednesday: Col de Turini at dawn, breakfast, 11am flight home.

We end with the Col because it’s the moment we want guests to remember as they walk into Nice airport. Three nights at the same hotel, three lunches in three countries, and a dawn drive on the road the rally drivers built their reputations on.

— Niro Sharon, Founder, Pure Adrenalin