Zaha Hadid’s latest project – the final instalment of six mountain-top museums in Italy’s Dolomites curated by explorer Reinhold Messner – has welcomed its first visitors, offering stunning views of the surrounding mountains.
Built into the mountain rock at a height of 2,275m (7,463ft) above sea level, Messner Mountain Museum Corones is dedicated to the discipline of mountaineering and offers unique views of both the Dolomites and the Alps.
Zaha Hadid’s design blends the museum in with its surroundings, with the interior of the museum located underground the entrance and a viewing platform only visible from the outside. The museum offers exhibition space over three floors, with the interior designed to resemble waterfalls cascading down a mountain.
Curator Reinhold Messner, an Italian mountaineer best known as the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen, chose the site as the base for the sixth museum across the mountain range due to its “unique location in a true melting pot of the region's Ladin, Italian and German-speaking population”.
In addition to Zaha Hadid’s museum, the mountain is also home to MMM Firmian in Sigmundskron Castle near Bozen; Museum in the Clouds, located on Monte Rite between Pieve di Cadore and Cortina d’Ampezzo; Juval Castle in Vinschgau; Bruneck Castle in the Puster Valley; and finally MMM Ortles in Sulden am Ortler.
