- Climbing toward the Gnifetti Hut along Trail 6A , when you are about to enter the area from which you begin to see the Mantua, at about 3369m you should find the remains of the Sebastiano Linty Hut. It seems nothing remains: the lumber was used to build the Gnifetti Hut.
Approximate location of the Linty Hut
- The Hut was inaugurated on August 2, 1875, and built at the expense of Sebastiano Linty, mayor of Gressoney-Saint-Jean for 30 years and owner of the Hotel du Mont Rose,built in 1861, which still stands in the center of town (there is now a pizzeria on the ground floor).
Advertisement of the Hotel du Mont-Rose, 1900
- From a 1930 TCI map, here is the precise location of the Linty Hut, already then in ruins:
Linty Hut, 1930 map
- Very few pictures exist of the hut. The most accurate is this 1878 lithograph by Johan Jacob Weber, contained in the book Album of a Mountaineer in Valsesia, 1878.
Capanna Linty, lithograph, 1878
- This 1884 stereograph by Vittorio Sella shows only a small corner of it:
Capanna Linty, 1884
- Queen Margherita stayed overnight near the hut (since a queen certainly cannot sleep in a hut, she settled in the “royal tent”), on the occasion of her ascent to the 4270m Punta Gnifetti (where she would inaugurate, on August 18, 1893, the Capanna Margherita). Here is a description of the climb from the wonderful 1899 Casanova Illustrated Guide, focused to Gressoney:
- Two photos from Angelo Mosso’s book “Physiology of Man in the Alps,” 1897, Treves publishershowing two camps near the Linty hut
Angelo Mosso’s camp at the Linty hut
Angelo Mosso’s camp at the Linty hut
- Near the area where the hut stood, a very short distance from Trail 6A, an old iron cross is visible today, with the inscription JBA 1885.
Iron Cross JBA 1885
