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
Jacques Gabriel Jacques Gabriel Jacques Gabriel (1667–1742) was a French architect, the father of the famous Ange-Jacques Gabriel. His mother was a cousin of Jules Hardouin-Mansart and his father, another Jacques Gabriel was a masonry contractor for the "Bâtiments du Roi", the French royal works, and the designer of the Château de Choisy for the king's cousin, La Grande Mademoiselle. The younger Jacques Gabriel was appointed one of the "controlleurs généraux" at the "Bâtiments du Roi" in 1688, at the age of twenty-one. Two years later he was sent to accompany Robert de Cotte on an eighteen-month sojourn in Italy, sharpening his