Monte Rosa is the largest massif in the Alps, the second highest after Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Switzerland and the second highest in Italy. The mountain also beats the record for having nine of the first highest 20 summits in all of the Alps, as an alpine mountain chain with a higher than average altitude.
These summits are easy to get to on the lifts that whisk visitors up the 3,000 metres of Monte Moro (affording spectacular views over the “Himalayan Face” of Monte Rosa), and up the 2,000 metres of the Belvedere, literally at the foot of the glacier.
The place name Monte Rosa does not actually derive from the pinky, rose-coloured hues that sweep across the massif at dawn, as one might imagine, but in fact from the Latin word rosia, which in Aosta Valley dialect becomes rouése or rouja, meaning “glacier”.
