57 Fun Facts About Alps

The Alps' 1,200 km arc ends on the outskirts of which Danube city?

Vienna marks the end of the arc: the Vienna Woods on the city's western edge are the north-eastern foothills of the Alps.

Liechtenstein lies entirely in the Alps, but which other microstate also counts as an Alpine country?

Monaco signed the Alpine Convention in 1994, and its entire two square kilometres fall inside the treaty's map of the range, just as all of Liechtenstein does.

The hikers who found Ötzi the Iceman in 1991 first took him for what?

A modern mountaineer killed in an accident was the first guess; five days later an Innsbruck archaeologist judged the body at least 4,000 years old, and it proved older still.

Ötzi was found just inside Italy, so which city's museum has displayed him since 1998?

Bolzano won a border dispute by a whisker: a survey put the find 92.56 metres inside Italy, because the frontier had been drawn across deep snow and missed the true watershed.

Ötzi died long before the Bronze Age, carrying an axe with a blade of almost pure what?

Copper made up 99.7% of the blade, and its ore came not from the Alps but from southern Tuscany.

Ötzi's death was blamed on an accident until a 2001 X-ray revealed what?

An arrowhead in his shoulder had cut an artery, so he bled to death within minutes; the shaft had been pulled out, leaving only the flint tip behind.

Hannibal, who famously marched war elephants over the Alps to attack Rome, commanded the army of which ancient city?

Carthage's general set out with nearly 40 elephants; hardly any outlived the first winter in Italy, yet two years later he destroyed a Roman army at Cannae.

Hannibal's crossing of the Alps was part of which conflict?

The Second Punic War began when Hannibal stormed Saguntum, a Spanish ally of Rome, and he crossed the Alps to carry the fight into Italy itself.

The first Winter Olympics, in 1924, were held in which Alpine resort?

Chamonix actually hosted an 'International Winter Sports Week'; it went so well that the IOC afterwards created the Winter Olympics and counted that week as the first.

Why does Mont Blanc's official height rise and fall between surveys?

A summit ice cap sits over the rock, so surveyors have climbed it every two years since 2001; the 2023 survey found 4,805.59 m, more than two metres down on 2021.

Which instrument did Mont Blanc's first climbers carry up in 1786 to measure its height?

A barometer went up because the climb was driven by science: a Geneva naturalist had offered a reward to whoever first reached the top.

Jacques Balmat made the first ascent of Mont Blanc alongside which doctor?

Michel-Gabriel Paccard was long denied his due: a jealous rival who had failed on the mountain published a biased account, and the myth grew that Balmat alone deserved the credit.

The Mont Blanc Tunnel, opened in 1965, links France with which Italian town?

Courmayeur is the Italian end of the 11.6 km tunnel; crews drilling from each country met deep under the massif in 1962 with their lines within 13 centimetres of each other.

What caused the 1999 disaster inside the Mont Blanc Tunnel?

A truck caught fire halfway through, and its cargo of margarine and flour fed a blaze that killed 39 people and kept the tunnel shut for three years.

Who led the party that made the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865?

Edward Whymper, a London engraver, won a race: an Italian party led by his former climbing partner was still working up the far side when he reached the top on 14 July 1865.

On the Italian side, the Matterhorn is known by what name?

Cervino descends from the peak's old Latin name, Mons Silvius or Silvanus, often read as 'wooded mountain'; it wore down to Servin, and the later C spelling invites a false link to deer (cervo).

Which is the largest glacier in the Alps?

Aletsch forms where several ice streams merge at Konkordiaplatz into one river of ice more than 20 km long and about 900 metres thick at its deepest.

Heinrich Harrer's classic book about climbing the Eiger's north face is called what?

The White Spider is an ice field near the top of the wall whose gullies spread like legs; Harrer crossed it on the first ascent without any crampons.

The Eiger and Mönch are popularly rendered as the Ogre and the Monk, so what does their neighbour Jungfrau mean?

Virgin, or maiden, is the German meaning, and the name most likely comes from the nuns of Interlaken, who owned the alpine meadow facing the mountain's north side.

The Jungfrau Railway reaches Europe's highest station mostly by what route?

Inside a mountain tunnel bored through the Eiger and the Mönch: the line took 16 years to build, opened in 1912 and is sheltered from snow and storms most of the way up.

Which pass did Napoleon cross with 40,000 troops in 1800?

The Romans had used the same crossing to reach their north-western provinces, and a hospice for travellers has stood at its summit since 1049.

Which tunnel under the Alps became the world's longest railway tunnel when it opened in 2016?

Gotthard Base Tunnel runs 57 km through the base of the mountains with almost no gradient, built to shift freight crossing Switzerland from trucks onto trains.

Which pale Alpine range in north-eastern Italy is named after an 18th-century French geologist?

Dolomites honours Déodat de Dolomieu, who described their magnesium-rich rock in 1791; locals had called them the Pale Mountains, and UNESCO listed them in 2009.

Which French pass is the highest paved road pass in the Alps?

Col de l'Iseran turned the 2019 Tour de France: a hailstorm and mudslide halted the stage beyond it, times were taken at the summit, and Egan Bernal took the yellow jersey he kept to Paris.

Which Italian pass climbs its northern ramp through 48 numbered hairpin bends?

Stelvio Pass got its road in the 1820s, when the Austrian Empire built it to reach Lombardy; the Giro d'Italia first crossed it in 1953.

Which pass carries the E45 motorway between Innsbruck and South Tyrol, a trade route since Roman times?

Brenner is one of the lowest crossings of the main Alpine chain at about 1,370 m and stays open all year; the railway finished over it in 1867 needed no major tunnel.

What is the highest mountain in Germany?

Zugspitze rises to 2,962 m on the Austrian border; an army lieutenant surveying the region made the first recorded ascent in 1820, and cable cars from both countries now reach the top.

What is the highest mountain in Austria?

Grossglockner reaches 3,798 m and towers over the Pasterze, Austria's longest glacier; a prince-bishop organised the expedition that first climbed it in 1800.

Which mountain appears on the flag and coat of arms of Slovenia?

Triglav, usually read as 'three-headed', is Slovenia's highest peak; in 1895 a village priest bought its summit for one florin and put up the small metal tower that still stands there.

Which peak is the highest in the Eastern Alps?

Piz Bernina is the only peak above 4,000 m in the Eastern Alps; Johann Coaz, the surveyor who made the first ascent in 1850, also gave the mountain its name.

The Dufourspitze, second-highest summit in the Alps, is the top of which massif?

Monte Rosa has nothing to do with pink: the name is thought to come from a local dialect word for glacier, and its highest summit honours the Swiss surveyor General Dufour.

In Swiss mountain villages, the word 'alp' refers to what?

A high summer pasture is what locals mean by an alp; herders move up with the cows for the warm months and turn the milk into cheese on the spot.

Which river begins as Alpine glacial meltwater, flows through Lake Geneva and on into France?

Rhône water starts at the glacier of the same name in Valais, and in France it cools several nuclear power stations before reaching the Mediterranean.

Which Alpine river drains into the Danube and ultimately the Black Sea?

Inn water from the Swiss Engadine joins the Danube at Passau, where on average it delivers more water than the river it is said to feed.

Because their snow and ice feed so many of the continent's great rivers, the Alps are often called Europe's what?

Water tower is the usual label: the mountains store winter snow and release it in summer, sustaining millions of people in lowlands far downstream.

By the 19th century fewer than 100 Alpine ibex survived, all in what is now which national park?

Gran Paradiso began as a royal hunting reserve, declared in 1856 to guard the last ibex from poachers, and became Italy's first national park in 1922.

Which Alpine animal whistles to warn its colony, then sleeps through the whole winter?

Marmot whistles send the whole colony diving for cover from eagles; the animals then spend six months or more huddled asleep in a sealed burrow, living off their fat.

Which bird, reintroduced to the Alps, lives mainly on bones it shatters on rocks?

Bearded vulture, or lammergeier, carries bones too big to swallow high into the air and drops them on rocks to reach the marrow; bone makes up most of its diet.

The soft 'shammy' cloth used to polish cars takes its name from the hide of which Alpine animal?

Chamois hide was the original 'shammy', a word that is just the French name spelled the way English speakers said it; today the cloths are almost all made from sheepskin instead.

Edelweiss, a woolly cousin of the sunflower, belongs to which plant family?

Daisy relatives pack many tiny florets into one head; the edelweiss's white 'petals' are really woolly leaf-like bracts, and their hairs shield it from drought and ultraviolet light.

According to Pliny, the gentian takes its name from a king of which ancient people?

The Illyrians' last king, Gentius, defeated by Rome in 168 BC, is said by Pliny to have discovered the plant's tonic properties, though the story may well be a folk etymology.

Which novel was conceived during a stormy 1816 stay on the shores of Lake Geneva?

Frankenstein began as Mary Shelley's entry in a ghost-story contest Byron proposed when a volcanic eruption half a world away gave Europe a cold, stormy 'year without a summer' and kept his guests indoors.

Which 1761 novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau helped make the Alps fashionable as a place of beauty?

Julie, or the New Heloise, a love story told in letters, made the Lake Geneva shore where it is set famous, and travellers were soon arriving to see the scenery for themselves.

Who wrote Heidi, the children's classic set in the Swiss Alps?

Johanna Spyri set the story in the hills above Maienfeld, and the area now trades on it: the surrounding holiday region markets itself to tourists as Heidiland.

In Heidi, the girl is taken from her grandfather's mountain hut to which city to be Klara's companion?

Frankfurt makes her so homesick that she starts sleepwalking, and the household takes her night-time wanderings for a ghost until the family doctor orders her sent home to the mountains.

Which Savoy cheese, a cousin of Gruyère, comes in huge wheels with a concave rim?

Beaufort wheels average about 40 kg; the hollow rim left by the wooden hoop is said to have made them easier to strap onto mules for the trip down the mountain.

Which naturalist, studying rocks near his Neuchâtel home, argued the Alps had once been iced over?

Louis Agassiz, already famous for his work on fossil fish, took up glaciers in 1836 and read scratched bedrock and stray boulders far from any ice as proof of a great Ice Age.

Which composer sent Clara Schumann an alphorn tune in 1868 that became the great horn call of his First Symphony?

Brahms wrote the melody on a birthday greeting to her with the words 'Thus blew the shepherd's horn today'; it rings out in the finale of the symphony, which he did not finish until 1876.

The alphorn is prominently featured in advertisements for which product?

Ricola cough drops ads have the brand name bellowed across the mountains beside the horn; makers traditionally carved one from a spruce that had grown curved on a steep slope, giving the upturned bell.

A Freddie Mercury statue stands on Lake Geneva in which town, where Queen owned a studio?

Montreux's casino housed Mountain Studios, which Queen bought in 1979 and where the band made Made in Heaven, their last album with Mercury; the rooms are now a small Queen museum.

Why did Toblerone drop the Matterhorn from its packaging in 2023?

Production moved abroad, partly to Slovakia, and 'Swissness' rules have since 2017 barred national symbols from milk-based products not made entirely in Switzerland; a generic summit replaced the famous peak.

The Alps rose when which two tectonic plates collided?

African and Eurasian plates squeezed an ancient sea out of existence as they closed; its floor was folded and thrust skyward, which is why rock laid down under water now forms high Alpine peaks.

Which French city is the largest lying within the Alps themselves?

Grenoble: ringed by three mountain ranges, it is built on a glacial valley floor so level that it counts among the flattest cities in France; Lyon and Nice lie outside the Alps.

Austria's Erzberg is quarried for the ore of which metal?

Iron: the name simply means "ore mountain", and since 1890 open-pit terraces have cut the whole peak into a giant stepped pyramid.

A 1999 avalanche that killed 31 people buried part of which Austrian ski village, in a zone mapped as safe?

Galtür: hazard models said even a once-in-150-years avalanche would stop short of the houses, so the village's safe zones had to be redrawn after the powder snow reached them.

What is the festive autumn parade of garlanded cows coming down from the mountains called in Austria and Bavaria?

Almabtrieb: by custom, in many valleys the herd is garlanded only if the summer on the mountain passed without a fatal accident.

Romansh, Switzerland's fourth national language, is descended mainly from which language?

Latin: Roman soldiers and officials brought it to the Alpine province of Raetia after 15 BC, and the local Celtic and Raetic speakers gradually adopted it.