Do you think the Matterhorn/Cervin is a Swiss mountain? You're wrong! It's an Italo-Swiss mountain, as the border is just crossing its top! You can reach the Cervino from the South, across the Val d'Aoste then along the Valtournenche.

In fact, the highest Swiss peak is only 1m higher than its Italian counterpart!

The Matterhorn is therefore also a symbol of all the immigrant workers who came from Italy, without whom Switzerland would not be what it is, since it was they who largely built the country...

To the south, the peak can be reached from Valle d'Aosta along the Valtournenche to Cervinia-Breuil, which unlike Zermatt can be reached by car.

Cervinia-Breuil certainly doesn't have the charm of Zermatt, it's an ugly resort, but it makes up for it with a friendly welcome, prices that are less prohibitive than on the Swiss side, and above all its spectacular proximity to the mountains: as the crow flies, the Matterhorn is much closer to Cervinia-Breuil than it is to Zermatt.

From a purely visual point of view, the south face of the Matterhorn is quite different from the one we see on millions of postcards. It is more rugged, wilder...

Until the opening of the Kleinmatterhorn cable car on the Swiss side, the cable car on the Italian side was the highest in Europe: its Plateau Rosà station is at an altitude of 3500m!

From here, a ski area links up with the Kleinmatterhorn until the peak of summer... In a supreme irony for Swiss isolationists, the border crosses the resort, symbolised only by a vague line of paint on the ground...

Since 2023, the Matterhorn Alpine Crossing and Matterhorn Glacier Ride II cable cars have provided a long-awaited cross-border link between Zermatt and Cervinia-Breuil.

Useful links

Italian Autonomous Region of Val d'Aoste (iSwitzerland Guide) - Wikipedia