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Matterhorn
The iconic horn of the Pennine Alps on the Swiss-Italian border
Few mountains are as instantly recognisable as the Matterhorn, whose near-symmetrical pyramid of rock juts 4,478 metres into the sky above the Swiss village of Zermatt. Its four steep faces, aligned almost to the compass points, give it the shape that has become a shorthand for mountains everywhere - stamped on chocolate bars, copied in theme parks, and chased by climbers as the great prize of the Alps. It rides the border between Switzerland and Italy, called the Cervino on the Italian side.
The Matterhorn is a horn - a glacial landform carved when several glaciers gnawed at a single mountain from different sides, grinding it to a sharp peak. Its rock is a stack of crystalline basement and ocean-floor sediments piled up when the African plate collided with Europe, so the summit actually carries fragments of an ancient seabed once between the two continents. The faces are notoriously loose and exposed, swept by rockfall as the permafrost that once cemented them thaws, and storms can engulf the peak with little warning.
The first ascent, on 14 July 1865 by a party led by Edward Whymper, ended in tragedy when four of the seven climbers fell to their deaths on the descent, a disaster that shocked Victorian Britain and helped fix the mountain's grim romance. Zermatt grew into one of the premier resorts of the Alps, car-free and crowded with skiers and climbers, and the Hornli Ridge remains the classic route to the top. The Matterhorn endures as the emblem of the entire range.