Mountain Museum of Reinhol Messner

MMM Firmian in Sigmundskron Castle near Bozen addresses the subject of man’s encounter with the mountains. I took a public bus and then hiked up to the entrance of the Mueseum. 945 A.D. is the year of the earliest extant record of the castle. In 1027 the Emperor Conrad II presented the castle to the Bishop of Trent. In the 12th century the castle passed to high-ranking civil servants, who thereupon called themselves “von Firmian”. Around 1473 Duke Sigmund the Wealthy, Prince of the Tyrol, bought the castle, had it converted into a fortress and changed its name to Sigmundskron. The ruins of the castle were finally acquired by the Bozen provincial authority in 1957. Now the paths, stairs and towers lead visitors from the depths of the mountain, where their origins and exploitation are brought to life, and the religious significance of the peaks as an aid to orientation and a bridge to the beyond, to the history of mountaineering and the alpine tourist industry that we know today. - Nancy