Messner Mountain Museum "Ortles" Solda

The Messner Mountain Museum Ortles in Solda/Sulden is dedicated to ice and glaciers. The exhibition focuses on South Tyrol's most important mountain massif: the Ortler. In collaboration with architect Arnold Gapp, Reinhold Messner has created a unique museum, MMM Ortles is housed in a specially designed new building. The architect from Vinschgau managed to fit most of the museum into a small hill. Uniquely, the entrance was integrated into a natural stone wall and the folded walls of exposed concrete are modelled on ice crystals and ice caves. Inside, visitors can admire the world's largest collection of Ortler mountain paintings and ice tools from two centuries. The light is cast through a jagged band of windows onto the exhibits and will remind guests of a glacial crevasse. Ingeniously, the snow-covered peak of the Ortler mountain can be glimpsed at one point of the museum. The window acts as a picture frame so that the mountain is effectively "hung" in the exhibition.