Mile high club: Zaha Hadid's Messner Mountain Museum opens in Corones, Italy

2015-07-29T14:10:00-04:00

Dedicated to traditional climbing, the museum is first of all an extraordinary overlook: the volumes that protrude from the ground, like four large eyes wide open on a majestic landscape, seem to emerge from the earth’s bowels to invite us to admire the Alpine chains around, from the Zillertal to the Ortles to the Dolomites.

A tip of the hat to Riccardo Bianchini, who posted in the forums earlier this week some photos from the press opening of Zaha Hadid's Messner Mountain Museum in Plan de Corones, Italy. Named after the famous mountaineer, Reinhold Messner, the museum is the final of six museums planned by Messner in gut-wrenchingly altitude-advantaged locations throughout South Tyrol and Belluno in Italy. As described by MMM, the museums are designed for visitors to have an "encounter with the mountains, with mountain people and ultimately with ourselves." ZHA's museum, stuck straight through a mountain peak to poke out at multiple angles, certainly qualifies. Specifically, the museum is located on the Kronplatz plateau, at an altitude of 2275m (approximately 1.4 miles).

On the cusp of last year's winter, construction on the museum had to pause because conditions simply became too difficult. Here are some construction photos at that phase, also courtesy of Bianchini's forum posting:

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Mile high club: Zaha Hadid's Messner Mountain Museum opens in Corones, Italy