Mountaineering In 1573 Francesco De Marchi and Francesco Di Domenico ascended Corno Grande, the highest peak in the Apennine Mountains. During the Enlightenment, as a product of the new spirit of curiosity for the natural world, many mountain summits were surmounted for the first time.. In 1741 Richard Pococke and William Windham made a historic visit to Chamonix. In 1757 Swiss scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure made the first of several unsuccessful attempts on Mont Blanc in France, finally offering a reward, which was claimed in 1786 by Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard. By the early 19th century many of the alpine
Alexis Paccard of public buildings. He worked at the Louvre and the Tuileries under the direction of Louis Visconti. In 1854, he was an architect of the Château de Rambouillet, then Palace of Fontainebleau. In December 1863 he became professor of architecture at the Ecole, and among his students was Albert-Félix-Théophile Thomas. Alexis Paccard Alexis Paccard (12 June 1813 – 18 August 1867) was a French architect. Paccard entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1830 in the workshops of Louis-Hippolyte Lebas and Jean-Nicolas Huyot. He won the Second Grand Prix in 1835 for a medical school, and won