Mont Blanc

Where is Mont Blanc?

Mont Blanc is part of the Graian Alps, Mont Blanc massif.

You will find it in: France, Italy.

Summit: 45.833° N, 6.865° E

The story behind it

Mont Blanc formed as the African and European tectonic plates pushed together over tens of millions of years, crumpling the crust upward into the Alps. Its summit is a huge dome of packed snow and ice sitting on a granite base, which means its exact height shifts slightly from year to year as snow builds up or melts away. The valley town of Chamonix at its foot became the birthplace of modern mountaineering after two local men, Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard, made the first ascent in 1786 to win a prize offered by a Swiss scientist. Today, cable cars whisk tourists partway up for stunning views, while thousands of climbers attempt the summit every summer, though sudden storms, crevasses, and rockfall still make it a genuinely serious mountain, not just a big hill.

Find it on the globe

Mont Blanc is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.