Corones, Zaha Hadid-designed addition to Messner’s Mountain Museum

Reinhold Messner, the legenday climber and prolific writer, has just completed his 6th Mountain Museum located in Italy’s Dolomites.  Designed by Zaha Hadid on an Alpine Peak with underground galleries and a cantilevered viewing platform over the valley, Corones is devoted to Alpine history.

The scale, scope and vision of Messner’s extraordinary gift to Alpinists, climbers of all kinds, lovers of mountain cultures – I would say to the world – is staggering.  His other museums are:

Messner’s Mountain Museum Ortler

“Together with the architect Arnold Gapp, Reinhold Messner has created a unique museum. The South Tyrolean architect has located most of the museum inside a hill next to an old farmhouse which is now an inn by the name of Yak & Yeti. Access to the museum is via an opening in a retaining wall built to support the hill, which is covered with slabs of stone. A short ramp takes visitors into the depths of a man-made cavern built of fair-faced concrete. The high interior is illuminated by a skylight in the form of continuous ribbon of glass that interrupts the surface of the upper floor like the line of a crevasse. At one point, the opening offers a direct view of the snowy peak of the Ortler with its mountain-top glacier.”

Messner’s Mountain Museum Firmian

A number of Messner’s Mountain Museums are located in rescued and refurbished castles, Firmian being one of them.  MMM Firmian, in Sigmundskron Castle near Bozen, addresses the subject of man’s encounter with the mountains.

Messner’s Mountain Museum Ripa

Ri (Tibetan for mountain) Pa (Tibetan for man) is another of Messner’s restored castles – Bruneck – that focuses on mountain peoples from the world over and their life ways.

Messner’s Mountain Museum Juval

The museum in Juval Castle in Vinschgau is dedicated to the Magic of the Mountain and houses several fine art collections: a Tibetica collection, a gallery of paintings of the world’s holy mountains, a collection of masks from five continents, a unique Gesar of Ling exhibition, a Tantra Room and the Expedition Cellar.

Messner’s Mountain Museum Dolomite

And, finally, Fort Monte Rite, with its 360 degree drop dead views, is an ode to – and a history of – the Dolomites, where Messner grew up in a mountain climbing family.

There are two words for journey that I love: the Swahili, safari and the Dzongkha, kora.  The latter refers to both an internal and a physical journey, and it is this one that comes to mind when I imagine an immersive journey to the Messner mountain museums.  Located in the Tyrol, one would start with Firmian, perhaps, using Bozen as the hub for day trips by car, rail or on foot, to the five others.  Or, one could easily access the individual museums as a day trip from any of the gorgeous cities in the Veneto.

http://www.messner-mountain-museum.it/en/