It’s hard to imagine that an attractive, lively town as famous as Zermatt, surrounded as it is by an arrestingly beautiful alpine panorama, could have initially become world-famous because of a dreadful misfortune.
“How come everyone can instantly recognize the Matterhorn when they see a photo?” she went on. “The Matterhorn isn’t even the highest mountain in Switzerland. So how did Zermatt become so famous?” She paused for dramatic effect. “It’s because of a tragedy.”
Zermatt was put on the map thanks—or no thanks, depending on how you look at it—to British mountaineer Edward Whymper. The Matterhorn was considered “the most thoroughly inaccessible of all mountains,” Whymper wrote in his memoir,It was one of the last peaks in the Swiss Alps that had not yet been summited, and Whymper was determined to do so. On July 14, 1865, after seven failed attempts, Whymper, along with six other climbers, reached the top. The men were victorious.
The museum also highlights the achievements of women: Lucy Walker, who, in 1871 and wearing a long flannel skirt, was the first woman to reach the summit, and Meta Brevoort, who, also in 1871, was the first to traverse the mountain from Zermatt to Breuil, on the Italian side. From left to right: Matterhorn glacier paradise, Gorner glacier, Gornergrat Railway, Meta Brevoort, and Lucy WalkerToday, people still travel to Zermatt to climb the Matterhorn but the town is now much better known as a glitzy year-round, world-class ski resort. The only sign of this prosperous town’s peasant past is the historic wooden grain storage sheds, known as “spychers,” sprinkled around town and up the mountain slopes.
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