Capanna Regina Margherita

The Capanna Margherita, built on the summit of the Signalkuppe (Punta Gnifetti) at 4554 m, is the highest building in Europe. The first wooden hut on the summit, the Capanna Gnifetti, was raised in 1893 by the Varallo section of the Club Alpino Italiano and inaugurated in person by Queen Margherita of Savoy, who walked up from Alagna with her guides over two days at the age of forty-two — an event widely reported in the Italian press and used by the royal house as a piece of Alpine-nationalist iconography. The original wooden building survived until 1980 and is preserved at the foot of the mountain in Alagna; the present stone-and-copper hut was opened in 1980 after a complete rebuild.

The hut has carried a high-altitude physiology laboratory since its earliest years. Angelo Mosso, the Turin physiologist, conducted some of the first systematic studies of high-altitude hypoxia at the Margherita in the 1890s; his work was the foundation of modern altitude medicine, and a brass plaque in the dining room commemorates it. The CNR (the Italian national research council) and the Politecnico di Milano have operated continuous experiments at the hut since the 1980s, and visiting climbers sometimes find themselves enrolled as research subjects in exchange for a discount on dinner. The hut also serves as an emergency shelter for parties benighted on the Monte Rosa summit ridge, and has saved many lives during storms over its 130 years.

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