Abstract The rigid piperazine homologue 2, 5-diazabicyclo [2.2. 1] heptane (DBH) finds extensive application in medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutical research, but access to this scaffold is non-trivial. This letter details a concise synthetic sequence that gives ready access to DBH on gram scale. The route features a Staudinger reduction of an azide to facilitate a transannular cyclisation