Exhibition > Bruno and Ettore Castiglioni: two brothers and the mountains

Bruno (1898–1945) and Ettore Castiglioni (1908–1944) saw mountaineering as a quest for freedom and spiritual growth. As part of the Italian Resistance movement, Ettore and Bruno died for their beliefs, in March 1944 and April 1945 respectively. Although all of the Castiglioni family had ties with the mountains, Bruno and Ettore made them an existential vocation. Bruno’s was more linear and scientific, while Ettore’s was more varied, impetuous and painful, yet each encouraged and learned from the other.

Ettore wrote guidebooks with a modern feel that were inspired by his field trips with Bruno, a geographer and geologist, who gave him knowledge and method. They were also bound by their perfect knowledge of German, which enabled them to read mountain guides, magazines, and geomorphology texts from beyond the Alps. Of the two, Ettore was the more famous mountaineer, and still today mountain-lovers are constantly reminded of his life in books, guides and articles; climbing routes and the Tregnago branch of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI) in Verona are also named after him, as is a mountain refuge at the foot of the Marmolada. He was a writer, a “poet”, both in his writing and climbing, calling himself le poète vainquer in his diaries.

He was always seeking the “ideal line” to climb the rock-face; he was also a music-lover, composer and writer of first-rate mountain guides. Bruno also loved poetry, in particular Dante, whom he always quoted in his diaries, as well as other literati and artists. He read a great deal, but was not a writer. His personal diaries, in tiny handwriting, are concise and schematic; he would summarise scientific works, carefully noting down their conclusions in meticulous records, which are on display at the exhibition. Both brothers had their first experience of mountaineering at the school of Tita Piaz, a renowned mountain-guide in Val di Fassa. During their lives, Ettore won international renown as a mountaineer and Bruno as a scientist, being considered one of Italy’s foremost geomorphologists. Although books and numerous articles have been written about the two brothers, this is the first time, in Italy or abroad, that they have been the subjects of a major exhibition.

ETTORE CASTIGLIONI
Ettore Castiglioni was born in Ruffré, Trento, on 28 August 1908; he went on to become a landmark figure in the world of mountaineering between the two wars. He opened up almost 200 new routes through the Alps, and in the Dolomites in particular. Touring Club Italia (TCI) commissioned him to describe the Pala Group in S. Martino, which enabled him from 1934 to achieve his dream of living off the mountains and for the mountains. From then on, he devoted himself to writing Guide dei Monti d’Italia (Guides to the Mountains of Italy) for the Italian Alpine Club and Touring Club Italia, completing six guides in his short life. He died at the age of thirty-five. Held prisoner in Maloja on the Swiss border for being part of the Anti-Fascist Resistance, on 12 March 1944 he escaped and headed towards the Fuorn Pass in a blizzard, bootless and practically naked. He was found on 3 June, well below the pass on the Italian side; he was covered in snow and had died of exhaustion after completing a superhuman feat.

BRUNO CASTIGLIONI
Bruno Castiglioni was born in Milan on 12 May 1898. He died in Pavia on 27 April 1945, after twelve hours of agony, from injuries inflicted by German heavy-machinegun fire in Cascina Cravino; he was endeavouring to convince German troops to lay down their arms on 26 April, the day Italy was liberated. He wrote sixty-six painstaking works of geography and was hailed as one of Italy’s greatest geomorphologists. His knowledge of both contemporary and Quaternary glaciers, as well as his scrupulous research, enabled him to complete his 1940 work Carta delle Alpi nel Glaciale (Map of the Alps in the Ice Age). Today this work is still a prime example of knowledge of Alpine Glaciers during the Quaternary Period; it was based on a vast documented bibliography and follows in the footsteps of works by Penk and Brückner.

Exhibition inauguration
Friday 30 April 2010 at 5 pm
Sala del Museo storico Sat in via Manci 57

Open to the public
From 1 to 22 May 2010
Opening times: 1 to 9 May from 10 am to 12 pm and 4 pm to 7 pm; 11 to 15 May from 4 pm to 7 pm; 18 to 22 May from 4 pm to 7 pm