Zaha Hadid’s Messner Mountain Museum tunnels through an alpine peak

Zaha Hadid's Messner Mountain Museum (MMM) just opened to the public in Corones after three years of construction.

With a dramatic appearance evocative of a Bond villain lair, the stunning museum is perched atop Mount Kronplatz and overlooks panoramic views of the Dolomites and the Alps. The MMM Corones is the sixth and final installment in a series of mountain-top museums curated by legendary Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who famously made the first ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and was the first climber to ascend the world’s 14 peaks over 8,000 meters.

The striking 10,700-square-foot Messner Mountain Museum Corones is located 7,500 feet above sea level and accessible via cable car from within the Kronplatz ski resort in South Tyrol, Italy. Each museum in the MMM series is created to educate the public on mountaineering, mountain geology, traditions, culture, and more. ”The theme is rock and the great faces; the original, traditional mountain climbing is to rise again here. The particular thing about this museum is the combination of the location, the view, and the architecture,” says Messner in a press release.

The museum tunnels through Mount Kronplatz’s peak and emerges out of the rock face as three gently rounded concrete volumes with large glazed end-walls. One of the volumes has a viewing platform that cantilevers over a steep slope and looks out to spectacular views from the Zillertal Alps in the north to the Dolomites and South Tyrol. The contemporary building is built from thick glass-reinforced fiber concrete to match the color of the surrounding rock formations.

Inside, the museum is divided into three floors and features curved surfaces also built from cast concrete. Glossy black seating areas and displays mimic the appearance of anthracite coal buried beneath ground. The museum opened on July 24, 2015.