Classroom lesson · The Matterhorn · 🇨🇭 Switzerland

The Matterhorn

The mountain shaped like a tooth - and like a Toblerone bar

The Matterhorn's sharp, four-sided pyramid peak rising above snow

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The Matterhorn is one of the most famous mountains in the world. It sits on the border between Switzerland and Italy, in a giant chain of mountains called the Alps. Its shape is so striking that the Swiss chocolate bar 'Toblerone' is made in triangles to look like it.

Tell me more

The Matterhorn is 4,478 metres tall. That is roughly the same as 12 Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other. From the Swiss side, it looks like a giant stone tooth pointing at the sky, with four steep faces that almost meet at a single point.

It got its pointed shape from glaciers - rivers of ice that slowly carved away at the rock over millions of years. Each side of the mountain was ground down by a different glacier, which is why it ended up four-sided.

The closest town to the Matterhorn is called Zermatt. Cars are not allowed there - everyone gets around by little electric taxis, horse-drawn carriages or simply by walking. From Zermatt, mountain trains and cable cars carry visitors up to look at the peak.

The Toblerone chocolate bar was invented in Bern, Switzerland's capital, in 1908. The packaging is shaped like a tiny Matterhorn. If you look closely at the picture on a Toblerone wrapper, there is a bear hidden in the mountain - because Bern means 'bear' and it is the symbol of the city.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01How might it feel to live in a town with no cars? What would be different about getting to school?
  2. 02Glaciers slowly carved the Matterhorn into its sharp shape. What other things in nature are shaped slowly over a very long time?
  3. 03Why might a country put a picture of a mountain on its chocolate bar?
Try this

Classroom activity

On A4, draw your own mountain in the shape of a chocolate bar. Decide what country your mountain is in and what flavour the chocolate is. Hide one secret animal in your drawing - like the bear hidden in the Toblerone logo - and see if a partner can spot it.