The Matterhorn

The Matterhorn is 4,478 metres high and has four faces and four ridges that meet at the summit: that is why from any side it looks like a pyramid. The Italian side, the one you see climbing the Valtournenche, is the south face, with the Testa del Leone in front of it and the Lion ridge running straight up to the top.

The first ascent was in 1865, from the Swiss side, and it ended with four deaths on the way down; three days later Jean-Antoine Carrel, a guide from Valtournenche, came up the Italian ridge. Since then the Matterhorn guides have been a local corporation, and the village recognises them as such.

Breuil-Cervinia

Breuil-Cervinia stands at two thousand metres at the head of the valley, and it grew as a ski resort in the nineteen thirties: it is a village of hotels and lifts, not an old hill town, and it should be taken for what it is. From there the cable cars climb to the Plateau Rosa, at 3,480 metres, where people ski in summer too and where you cross over to Zermatt.

Summer and the paths

Above Cervinia are the Lago Blu, a small sheet of water in which the whole mountain is reflected, and the lakes of the Cime Bianche. The paths set off from the village and from the hamlets of the valley; the Tour of the Matterhorn, which circles the massif by way of Switzerland, takes a week.

The Valtournenche has campsites along the road and near the lakes, between a thousand and two thousand metres. The road from the valley floor climbs with many hairpins for some thirty kilometres, and in high season it is busy.