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Troops under Generalissimo Alexander Suvorov crossing the Alps in 1799, by Vasily Surikov Napoleon passing the Great St Bernard Pass, by Edouard Castres. The French historian Fernand Braudel, in his famous volume on Mediterranean civilisation, describes the Alps as "an exceptional range of mountains from the point of view of resources, collective disciplines, the quality of its human ...
The Alps extend in an arc from France in the south and west to Slovenia in the east, and from Monaco in the south to Germany in the north. The Alps are a crescent shaped geographic feature of central Europe that ranges in an 800 km (500 mi) arc (curved line) from east to west and is 200 km (120 mi) in width.
The Alps were the first mountain system to be extensively studied by geologists, and many of the geologic terms associated with mountains and glaciers originated there. The term Alps has been applied to mountain systems around the world that exhibit similar traits.
While smaller groups within the Alps may be easily defined by the passes on either side, defining larger units can be problematic. A traditional divide exists between the Western Alps and the Eastern Alps, which uses the Splügen Pass (Italian: Passo dello Spluga) on the Swiss-Italian border, together with the Rhine to the north and Lake Como in the south as the defining features.
The Romans did not seem to find Tyrol an attractive area in which to build new towns, because there are few of them. One town they did build was Aguntum , near modern Lienz . In late antiquity (from AD 476), Tyrol belonged to the Ostrogoths , and it was included in the Ostrogothic Kingdom .
Hannibal led his Carthaginian army over the Alps and into Italy to take the war directly to the Roman Republic, bypassing Roman and allied land garrisons, and Roman naval dominance. The two primary sources for the event are Polybius and Livy , who were born c. 20 years and c. 160 years after the event, respectively. [ 2 ]
War against the Austro-Hungarian Empire was declared May 24, 1915. This put Tyrol on the front line, which passed through some of the highest mountains in the Alps. The ensuing front became known as the "War in ice and snow", as troops occupied the highest mountains and glaciers all year long.
The Romans also developed the Great St. Bernard Pass beginning in the year 47, and in 69 part of the legions of Vitellius used it to traverse the Alps. The passes were expanded from dirt trails to narrow paved roads. [18] Between 101 and 260, the legions moved out of the region, allowing trade to expand.