Messner Mountain Museum Corones, is situated on the summit plateau of Kronplatz (2,275 m) in South Tyrol.
After a short trip by car from Venice of 3 hours you will immediately lose yourself in the magnificent scenario of the Dolomites, included among the miracles of nature by Unesco. The amazing show begin during the trip when, an hour and a half before, you start driving into the Cadore valley where you can find even astonishing architectural sites like the Eni Village or Cortina d'Ampezzo, the popular winter sport resort.
Messner Mountain Museum is dedicated to traditional mountaineering, which has strongly influenced – and been strongly influenced by – Reinhold Messner. Reinhold Messner is the first person to climb all 14 mountains around the world over 8,000 meters, and the first to climb Mount Everest without the aid of tanked oxygen.
The museum is devoted to mountain history and also offers unique views of the great mountain walls of the Dolomites and the Alps.
At the edge of the most magnificent viewing platform in South Tyrol, in the distinctive museum building designed by Zaha Hadid, the view goes beyond the borders of South Tyrol to all points of the compass: from the Lienz Dolomites in the east to the Ortler in the west, from the Marmolada in the south to the Zillertal Alps in the north.
The view from Kronplatz is one of the most beautiful in the Alps: from the Dolomites over the Puster Valley to the Zillertal Alps. The mountain also stands at the meeting point of the three South Tyrolean cultures – German, Ladin and Italian. In winter Kronplatz is South Tyrol's most popular ski destination; in summer, however, it attracts only a few tourists. The idea of a viewing platform was born as a way to revitalise the plateau in the warmer months and ensure a more sustainable use of the lifts.
Messner heard of this idea, and proposed a cultural revaluation: a place of quiet, a place to slow down, a refuge and a realm of experience as an antidote to the existing “sporting hype”. A museum devoted to traditional alpinism, as the coronation (corones in Ladin means “crown”) of his museum structure. The Skirama Kronplatz not only immediately agreed, but was also able to persuade no less than the architectural studio of Zaha Hadid to take on the project. South Tyrol's famous mountain for skiers and hikers – also a perfect launch pad for hanggliders and paragliders – thus became a museum mountain.
As Zaha Hadid said the idea behind the project is that visitors can descend within the mountain to explore its caverns and grottos, before emerging through the mountain wall on the other side, out onto the terrace overhanging the valley far below with spectacular, panoramic views.
Reflecting the lighter colours and tones of the jagged limestone peaks of the surrounding Dolomites, the exterior panels of the Messner Mountain Museum are formed from a lighter shade of glass-reinforced fibre concrete and fold within the museum to meet the darker interior panels that have the luster and colouration of anthracite found deep below the surface.
The majority of the museum's exterior and interior panels are also made from in-situ concrete, with a formwork of tapered surfaces used to generate the peaks and abutments of the exterior panels that convey the rock and ice formations of the surrounding landscape. Internal and external panels were prefabricated, with the more complex curved elements created in a process of spraying layers of high-performance fibre-concrete into moulds carved from CNC-milled foam using the architect‘s 3D model.
Messner Mountain Museum by Zaha Hadid Architects is worth a visit! Great Panorama, astonishing architecture and interiors!
