In August 1893 the Italian Alpine Club had just finished a wooden hut on Punta Gnifetti, Monte Rosa, the highest in the Alps. Workers passed every load up the glacier, shoulder to shoulder, and the hut took her name: Capanna Regina Margherita. On 18 August Queen Margherita of Savoy, 41, set out at half past four in the morning, crossed the high glacier on foot and reached the hut at noon exactly. The others went down. She stayed, sat for more than two hours looking at the ice, and watched the sun set and rise. Before she left she burned a few lines into a wooden tablet, signed and dated 18-19 August 1893: "These mountains in their grandeur, these majestic glaciers, silence pitiable doubt." They are the heart of her longer Italian inscription, in Angelo Mosso's 1898 translation; the photograph of the tablet is his.

Her hut became Mosso's laboratory for the thin air. Rebuilt in 1980, it still opens every summer for anyone who makes the glacier climb, with a guide if you are new to it.

Which hut have you slept in?

Sources: Rivista Mensile del CAI, August and September 1893; A. Mosso, Life of Man on the High Alps (1898); G. Sella, Bollettino del CAI 1892; Rifugi Monterosa.

A paper pop-up book made by The Hut Book: the mountain's cards are true sections of the terrain. Terrain produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30, © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA. Photos: the tablet, A. Mosso (1898, public domain); the hut today, Lino Schmid, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Music: Der Sünder, an old Walser ballad from Visperterminen in the Valais, noted by Elise Wipf (1907), arranged for zither and piano. Sounds: Freesound (CC0); dobroide (CC BY 4.0).