Italian mountaineer and explorer Reinhold Messner is widely regarded as the world’s greatest living climber. And he can also be considered an attractions operator, having opened a series of six museums in the mountainous South Tyrol region of northern Italy.

The sixth and final museum, which opened in July 2015, is nestled in a mountain plateau surrounded by spectacular views. It was designed by the late architect Zaha Hadid and has recently been announced as a finalist in the culture category of the World Architecture Festival.

The network of Messner Mountain Museums (MMM), scattered throughout the Alps, reflects different aspects of mountaineering and tells stories of human encounters with the mountains. MMM Ripa focuses on mountain people, MMM Ortles focuses on glaciers and ice, MMM Juval is about mountain mythology and MMM Dolomites on rock and climbing, while MMM Firmian acts as the heart of the network.

The newest – Hadid’s MMM Corones – is devoted to the discipline itself and how the equipment and mountaineering culture have changed through history.

“Messner Mountain Museum Corones is the crowning piece of my mountain museum project, a place of quiet where people can slow down and enjoy the unforgettable views,” Messner says. “It is a place of withdrawal that opens up the human senses for the above and beyond, where the mountains become an experiential space and a part of our culture.”

“I present the development of modern mountaineering and 250 years of progress with regard to the equipment,” he says. “I speak of triumphs and tragedies on the world’s most famous peaks – the Matterhorn, Cerro Torre, K2 – and the depiction of our activity, however contradictory it may seem.”

Born in South Tyrol in 1944, Messner was the first person to climb all 14 peaks over 8,000 metres (26,000 feet). He made both the first solo ascent of Everest, and the first ascent without supplementary oxygen. He’s finished numerous expeditions, including – at age 60 – walking 1,900km (1,200 miles) across the Gobi desert.

“As the storyteller of traditional mountaineering, it’s not my intention to judge or dramatise, but simply to condense human experience of a world that is my world, of the 250-year-old contest between man and the mountain,” Messner says. “The focus is not on sport and records, but on people – on the key contributors to mountaineering, including philosophers and pioneers who had the courage to take the ‘golden step’ from the idea to the deed.”