A melting glacier in the Alps has shifted the border between Switzerland and Italy, making it questionable in which country an originally Italian mountain hut is located. The lodge is even engaged in diplomatic negotiations.
Let’s go back to the 3480 meter high snow-capped Testa Grigia peak in 1984. The year Rifugio Guide del Cervino was built, with forty beds and long wooden tables, entirely on Italian territory. A nice retreat for skiers in winter and summer – there is plenty of snow all year round.
But a lot has changed since then. The Theodul Glacier at the peak lost nearly a quarter of its mass between 1973 and 2010. And as a result, technically two-thirds of the mountain hut, including most of the beds and the restaurant, is now on Swiss territory.
How is that possible? Where the Italian-Swiss border crosses Alpine glaciers, the border normally follows the watershed. The melting of the Theodul Glacier exposed the rock below to the ice, changing the watershed and forcing the two neighbors to redraw a hundred-meter stretch of their boundary. This is now the subject of diplomatic negotiations. Because most mountain peaks do not have such an economic importance, but a mountain peak in a tourist area with a lodge on it does.
To exchange
It happens more often that the border is adjusted, Alain Wicht explains to The Guardian. He is the chief border officer at the Swiss national map agency Swisstopo and he monitors the seven thousand border posts along the 1935 kilometer long borders with Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Liechtenstein. In general, such cases are solved by exchanging plots of similar surface area and value, without involving politicians. “But this is the only place where a building is involved.” His Italian colleagues are refusing to comment “because of the complex international situation.”
Diplomatic negotiations were started as early as 2018 and a compromise was said to have been reached last year, but the details will not come out until the Swiss government has given its approval to the deal, which will not happen before 2023.
Wicht attended the negotiations and now says that both sides have made concessions to find a solution. In the meantime, Rifugio Guide del Cervino cannot be renovated, because villages on both sides of the border are not allowed to issue building permits until there is an agreement on the plot of land.
While the outcome remains a secret, the refuge’s manager, 51-year-old Lucio Trucco, is confident it will remain on Italian soil. “The lodge remains Italian, because we have always been Italian,” he said. “The menu is Italian, the wine is Italian and the taxes are Italian.”
Watch our news videos in the playlist below:
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and never miss a thing from the stars.
#glacier #melting #border #moving #Italian #mountain #refuge #Swiss