MMM – The Messner Mountain Museum Ortles

Reinhold Messner is definitely one of the most famous people from South Tyrol. He gained his fame as a rock climber, expedition mountaineer, polar and desert crosser and has repeatedly broken taboos. For four decades he gathered experience at the extreme edges of the earth, which today enables him to create a museum chain on the theme of mountains. Messner himself calls this project his “15th eight-thousander”. 

The Messner Mountain Museum, initiated by Reinhold Messner, comprises a six-part museum structure, whereby each house, like a satellite, is dedicated to a sub-theme. We would like to introduce you to the individual houses in the coming weeks and start today with the MMM Ortles.

At the End’ of the World: Permanent Exhibition at MMM Ortles

Glacier Worlds

The underground Messner Mountain Museum Ortles in Sulden am Ortler is located at 1900 m above sea level and dedicates the permanent exhibition “In the End of the World” to the topic of ice.

The designation “At the End of the World” has a historical origin. In a map by the geographer and cartologist Peter Anich from 1774, this was the name given to the Ortles mountain range under which the museum stands. In his MMM Ortles, Reinhold Messner tells of the terrors of ice and darkness, of snow people and snow lions, of the White Out and the third pole. The world’s largest collection of Ortles pictures is housed here. Ice tools from two centuries are also on display. Skiing, ice climbing, polar journeys are thematised here.

Als Besucher kannst du förmlich in den Berg hineingehen und dir ein Bild machen von Eisgebirgen, Arktis As a visitor, you can literally walk inside the mountain and get a picture of ice mountains, the Arctic and Antarctic, the power of avalanches and the effort artists put into depicting ice. Outside, the ice is real and next to it.

Die besondere The special architecture of MMM Ortles

With the Vinschgau architect Arnold Gapp, Reinhold Messner has created a unique museum, because the MMM Ortles is housed in a new building designed especially for it. The majority of the museum is pushed into a small hill. Over inclined levels, similar to smooth ice surfaces, you get deeper and deeper into the artificially created cave made of visible reinforced concrete. Only the entrance area and a jagged light shaft gap can be seen from the outside. This jagged band of windows, which breaks through the ceiling of the museum, gives the impression of being in a crevasse. At one point, even the snow-covered glacier peak of the Ortler is visible – it blends into the exhibition like another painting.

Yak & Yeti – The Inn of Reinhold Messner

Reinhold Messner has renovated a 400-year-old farm that was threatened with ruin and turned it into an inn. The farm, which is located right next to the MMM Ortler, specialises in yak meat, which is served as a delicacy alongside South Tyrolean specialities in the associated Yak & Yeti farm tavern. The Yak & Yeti is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. in both the summer and winter seasons.

MMM Curiosa in Sulden

The Messner Mountain Museum not only consists of the six main museums, it is extended by mini-museums: all three are freely accessible and serve merely as a “taster” to draw attention and whet the appetite for more.
The tiny museum in the so-called “flea house” in Sulden, where mountaineers were once allowed to spend the night, was the first of all museums. It came into being with the handing over of Paul Preuß’s hammer and a few other objects that should not exist, people firmly believed in the ideals of the great masters of alpinism.
Reinhold Messner exhibits these curious pieces of evidence of the small human weaknesses of the “greats on the mountain” like relics and tells the story of mountaineering in the Ortler region.

MMM Ortles Opening Hours & Contact

Due to the current Covid situation, MMM Ortles will be closed from 17 January. However, you can simply check the MMM Ortles website or call for the latest status and access regulations.

MMM Ortles
Forststraße 32/A
I-39029 Sulden (BZ)
Tel. +39 0473 613577

We hope you enjoy exploring the end of the world!