The Dolomites hold immeasurable thrills for travellers – now, the opening of a new mountaineering collection from one of the greatest climbers of all time, Reinhold Messner, is adding new meaning to their story.

The Dolomites, located in north-eastern Italy near the Austrian border, are hard country for an easy life. Full of stark pinnacles, stone cathedrals and fiercely savage vertical cliffs, the mountain range is characterised by landslides, avalanches and geology that has been in a constant battle with itself for more than 250 million years. Edges, crags and plateaus support little other than cable cars and via ferrata (iron roads) – climbing paths of steel cables, ladders and bridges built during World War One as improbable escape routes.

All of this makes the mountains an unlikely location for a collection of museums. Yet tucked away at high altitude, they have become gathering spots to reflect on nature, modern alpinism and climate change. What's more, they all have one thing in common: record-breaking climber Reinhold Messner.

Messner has been confronting extreme challenges for much of his life. In 1980, the Italian made the first solo ascent of Mount Everest. By 1986, he'd conquered the world's 14 highest mountains before anyone else, and without supplementary oxygen. In the years that followed, he dragged a sled unaided across both Greenland and Antarctica. His triumphs are enough to stir anyone's inner explorer.

Messner might be regarded as one of history's greatest climbers, but he's also a keeper of stories. Since summiting his first mountain aged five, he has written 80 books about his white-knuckle expeditions, and, even at 81 years old, the German speaker from Brixen in South Tyrol in the north of Italy is not preparing to slow down. If anything, he has many more stories to tell.

His latest project, located in the 3 Zinnen Dolomites region, was developed with his wife, Diane, amid rising interest in the area among travellers. The number of visitors to South Tyrol is consistently growing, according to the tourist board, and its mountains are a neat synthesis of two different worlds: a setting for entry-level hikers and a fantasy land for mountaineers.

When I met Messner, he was walking with small steps to his latest venture, Reinhold Messner Haus, which opened this summer. "It is my dream and challenge to keep the original spirit of mountaineering alive," he said, as if batting away any suggestion of retirement. "To pass my knowledge onto the next generation – that is why we have created this new house."

On the face of it, Reinhold Messner Haus is both a collection of trusted mountaineering tools and a timeline of the Italian's extraordinary feats. The building is not in a town centre like most traditional museums, but hidden away across a plateau atop Mount Elmo above the village of Sexten. It isn't located in any regular structure, either; it is inside a former cable car station that had previously been earmarked for demolition. "Sustainability in action," as Diane told me. "Everything was already here, so we didn't use new materials or resources."........

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