Monte Bianco & Skyway

Mont Blanc, in Italian Monte Bianco, is at around 4,805 m the highest mountain in the Alps and in Central Europe. On the Italian side above Courmayeur the modern revolving cable car Skyway Monte Bianco opens up the glacier world as far as the Punta Helbronner at 3,466 m, with a panorama of the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa and Gran Paradiso.

Highlights

• Highest summit of the Alps (around 4,805 m)
• Skyway Monte Bianco, revolving cable car up to 3,466 m
• Panorama over the highest peaks of the Western Alps
• Starting point for serious high tours above Courmayeur

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

Mont Blanc, Italian Monte Bianco, is, at 4808 metres, the highest peak of the Alps and of Western Europe, a mighty granite massif that touches three countries. Its myth begins in 1741, when the two Englishmen Richard Pococke and William Windham travelled into the valley of Chamonix to marvel at the glaciers, and thereby founded Alpine tourism. The summit itself was conquered only in 1786 by the physician Michel Paccard and the mountain guide Jacques Balmat. A little later it was also climbed by the Geneva naturalist Horace Bénédict de Saussure, who advanced the scientific exploration of the mountains and is often regarded as the founder of mountaineering.

On the Italian side, above the Aosta Valley near Courmayeur, the Skyway Monte Bianco cable car today leads in bold architecture up to the Punta Helbronner at around 3460 metres. The rotating panoramic cabins turn the ascent into a slow all-round view over the sea of glaciers of the massif. Where generations of alpinists climbed laboriously, the visitor now glides in a few minutes into a world of firn and rock, across to those ice streams that Pococke and Windham were once the first to marvel at with European eyes.