Monviso Group, Cuneo Province, Piedmont, Italyi

Regional Level Types
Monviso Group	Mountain Range
Cuneo Province	Province
Piedmont	Region
Italy	- not defined -

Mountain group, whose name is due to Monviso or Monte Viso (3841 m), the highest peak in the Cottian Alps. The Monviso Group is surrounded by the Varaita (Valle Varaita) and Po (Valle Po) valleys, on the Italian side (Cuneo Province, Piedmont), and the Guil Valley (Vallée du Guil), on the French side (Hautes-Alpes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur). The northwestern sector of the group, from Passo di Vallanta/Col Vallante (2811 m) to Colle delle Traversette/Col de la Traversette (2950 m), is located on the French border along the main Alpine Divide. On the northern slopes of Monviso are the headwaters of the Po, the longest Italian river.

The mountain group is frequently indicated as the Monviso Massif, but the use of this name is here discouraged in order to avoid any confusion with the larger Monviso meta-ophiolite complex or Monviso meta-ophiolite massif (in which most of the mountain group is included), a NS-trending body, 35 km long and up to 8 km wide, structurally sandwiched between the underlying Dora-Maira thrust units and the other, dominantly metasedimentary, units of the ocean-derived Piemonte Zone.


The Monviso Group is the source of raw materials of most "green stones" (serpentinite, omphacitite, jadeitite and mixed omphacite-jadeite rocks) used from the early Neolithic to the Bronze Age to make stone axeheads, which are spread all over the Western Europe (for jadeitite, see Punta Rasciassa and Vallone Bulè localities).


In ancient times Monviso was known as Mons Vesulus, i.e. "the mount visible". In fact, because it is higher than all its neighbouring peaks by about 500 m, its pyramid-like shape can be seen from a great distance in the Po Plain (for instance, on a very clear day it can be seen from the spires of Milan Cathedral).
Due to its fame, Monviso is mentioned by various Ancient Roman and medieval writers, including Virgil (as "Vesulus" in Aeneid, Book X), Pliny the Elder (as "Vesulus" in Natural History, III, 16), Dante (as "Monte Viso" in The Divine Comedy, Inferno, XVI, 95), Petrarch (as "Vessulus" in De insigni obedientia et fide uxoria), and Geoffrey Chaucer (as "Mount Vesulus" in The Canterbury Tales, Fragment IV, E, The Clerk's Tale. Furthermore, in the original text of the same tale the river Po is spelt as "Poo").

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