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Alps

The Alps are one of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately 1200 km across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia.

The Alpine arch extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste on the Adriatic and Vienna at the beginning of the Pannonian Basin. The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.

Mont Blanc spans the French–Italian border, and at 4809 m is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains 128 peaks higher than 4000 m.

The altitude and size of the range affect the climate in Europe; in the mountains, precipitation levels vary greatly and climatic conditions consist of distinct zones. Wildlife such as ibex live in the higher peaks to elevations of 3400 m, and plants such as edelweiss grow in rocky areas in lower elevations as well as in higher elevations.

Evidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era. A mummified man ("Ötzi"), determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian–Italian border in 1991.

By the 6th century BC, the Celtic La Tène culture was well established. Hannibal notably crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants, and the Romans had settlements in the region. In 1800, Napoleon crossed one of the mountain passes with an army of 40,000. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an influx of naturalists, writers, and artists, in particular, the Romanticists, followed by the golden age of alpinism as mountaineers began to ascend the peaks of the Alps.

The Alpine region has a strong cultural identity. Traditional practices such as farming, cheesemaking, and woodworking still thrive in Alpine villages. However, the tourist industry began to grow early in the 20th century and expanded significantly after World War II, eventually becoming the dominant industry by the end of the century.

The Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, Italian, Austrian and German Alps. the region is home to 14 million people and has 120 million annual visitors.

Etymology and toponymy

The English word Alps comes from the Latin Alpes.

The Latin word Alpes could possibly come from the adjective albus ("white"), or could possibly come from the Greek goddess Alphito, whose name is related to alphita, the "white flour"; alphos, a dull white leprosy; and finally the Proto-Indo-European word *albʰós. Similarly, the river god Alpheus is also supposed to derive from the Greek alphos and means whitish.

In his commentary on the Aeneid of Virgil, the late fourth-century grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus says that all high mountains are called Alpes by Celts.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Latin Alpes might derive from a pre-Indo-European word *alb "hill"; "Albania" is a related derivation. Albania, a name not native to the region known as the country of Albania, has been used as a name for several mountainous areas across Europe.

In Roman times, "Albania" was a name for the eastern Caucasus, while in the English languages "Albania" (or "Albany") was occasionally used as a name for Scotland, although it is more likely derived from the Latin word albus, the colour white.

In modern languages the term alp, alm, albe or alpe refers to a grazing pastures in the alpine regions below the glaciers, not the peaks.

An alp refers to a high mountain pasture, typically near or above the tree line, where cows and other livestock are taken to be grazed during the summer months and where huts and hay barns can be found, sometimes constituting tiny hamlets. Therefore, the term "the Alps", as a reference to the mountains, is a misnomer. The term for the mountain peaks varies by nation and language: words such as Horn, Kogel, Kopf, Gipfel, Spitze, Stock, and Berg are used in German-speaking regions; Mont, Pic, Tête, Pointe, Dent, Roche, and Aiguille in French-speaking regions; and Monte, Picco, Corno, Punta, Pizzo, or Cima in Italian-speaking regions.

Geography
The Alps are a crescent shaped geographic feature of central Europe that ranges in an 800 km arc (curved line) from east to west and is 200 km in width. The mean height of the mountain peaks is 2.5 km. The range stretches from the Mediterranean Sea north above the Po basin, extending through France from Grenoble, and stretching eastward through mid and southern Switzerland. The range continues onward toward Vienna, Austria, and southeast to the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia.

To the south it dips into northern Italy and to the north extends to the southern border of Bavaria in Germany. In areas like Chiasso, Switzerland, and Allgäu, Bavaria, the demarcation between the mountain range and the flatlands are clear; in other places such as Geneva, the demarcation is less clear.

The Alps are found in the following countries: Austria (28.7 % of the range's area), Italy (27.2%), France (21.4 %), Switzerland (13.2 %), Germany (5.8 %), Slovenia (3.6 %), Liechtenstein (0.08%) and Monaco (0.001 %).

The highest portion of the range is divided by the glacial trough of the Rhône valley, from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa on the southern side, and the Bernese Alps on the northern. The peaks in the easterly portion of the range, in Austria and Slovenia, are smaller than those in the central and western portions.

The variances in nomenclature in the region spanned by the Alps make classification of the mountains and subregions difficult, but a general classification is that of the Eastern Alps and Western Alps with the divide between the two occurring in eastern Switzerland according to geologist Stefan Schmid, near the Splügen Pass. The highest peaks of the Western Alps and Eastern Alps, respectively, are Mont Blanc, at 4810 m, and Piz Bernina, at 4049 m. The second-highest major peaks are Monte Rosa, at 4634 m, and Ortler, at 3905 m, respectively.

A series of lower mountain ranges run parallel to the main chain of the Alps, including the French Prealps in France and the Jura Mountains in Switzerland and France. The secondary chain of the Alps follows the watershed from the Mediterranean Sea to the Wienerwald, passing over many of the highest and most well-known peaks in the Alps. From the Colle di Cadibona to Col de Tende it runs westwards, before turning to the northwest and then, near the Colle della Maddalena, to the north. Upon reaching the Swiss border, the line of the main chain heads approximately east-northeast, a heading it follows until its end near Vienna.

The northeast end of the Alpine arc, directly on the Danube, which flows into the Black Sea, is the Leopoldsberg near Vienna. In contrast, the southeastern part of the Alps ends on the Adriatic Sea in the area around Trieste towards Duino and Barcola.

Passes

The Alps have been crossed for war and commerce, and by pilgrims, students and tourists. Crossing routes by road, train, or foot are known as passes, and usually consist of depressions in the mountains in which a valley leads from the plains and hilly pre-mountainous zones.

In the medieval period hospices were established by religious orders at the summits of many of the main passes. The most important passes are the Col de l'Iseran (the highest), the Col Agnel, the Brenner Pass, the Mont-Cenis, the Great St. Bernard Pass, the Col de Tende, the Gotthard Pass, the Semmering Pass, the Simplon Pass, and the Stelvio Pass.

Crossing the Italian-Austrian border, the Brenner Pass separates the Ötztal Alps and Zillertal Alps and has been in use as a trading route since the 14th century. The lowest of the Alpine passes at 985 m, the Semmering crosses from Lower Austria to Styria; since the 12th century when a hospice was built there, it has seen continuous use. A railroad with a tunnel 1 mi long was built along the route of the pass in the mid-19th century. With a summit of 2469 m, the Great St Bernard Pass is one of the highest in the Alps, crossing the Italian-Swiss border east of the Pennine Alps along the flanks of Mont Blanc. The pass was used by Napoleon Bonaparte to cross 40,000 troops in 1800.

The Mont Cenis pass has been a major commercial and military road between Western Europe and Italy. The pass was crossed by many troops on their way to the Italian peninsula. From Constantine I, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne to Henry IV, Napoléon and more recently the German Gebirgsjägers during World War II.

Now the pass has been supplanted by the Fréjus Highway Tunnel (opened 1980) and Rail Tunnel (opened 1871).

The Saint Gotthard Pass crosses from Central Switzerland to Ticino; in 1882 the 15 km Saint Gotthard Railway Tunnel was opened connecting Lucerne in Switzerland, with Milan in Italy. 98 years later followed Gotthard Road Tunnel (16.9 km long) connecting the A2 motorway in Göschenen on the north side with Airolo on the south side, exactly like the railway tunnel.

On 1 June 2016 the world's longest railway tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, was opened, which connects Erstfeld in canton of Uri with Bodio in canton of Ticino by two single tubes of 57.1 km.

It is the first tunnel that traverses the Alps on a flat route.

From 11 December 2016, it has been part of the regular railway timetable and used hourly as standard ride between Basel/Lucerne/Zürich and Bellinzona/Lugano/Milan.

The highest pass in the alps is the Col de l'Iseran in Savoy (France) at 2770 m, followed by the Stelvio Pass in northern Italy at 2756 m; the road was built in the 1820s.

Highest mountains
The Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme (UIAA) has defined a list of 82 "official" Alpine summits that reach at least 4000 m. The list includes not only mountains, but also subpeaks with little prominence that are considered important mountaineering objectives. Below are listed the 29 "four-thousanders" with at least 300 m of prominence.

While Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1786 and the Jungfrau in 1811, most of the Alpine four-thousanders were climbed during the second half of the 19th century, notably Piz Bernina (1850), the Dom (1858), the Grand Combin (1859), the Weisshorn (1861) and the Barre des Écrins (1864); the ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 marked the end of the golden age of alpinism. Karl Blodig (1859–1956) was among the first to successfully climb all the major 4,000 m peaks. He completed his series of ascents in 1911. Many of the big Alpine three-thousanders were climbed in the early 19th century, notably the Grossglockner (1800) and the Ortler (1804), although some of them were climbed only much later, such at Mont Pelvoux (1848), Monte Viso (1861) and La Meije (1877).

The first British Mont Blanc ascent by a man was in 1788; the first ascent by a woman was in 1808. By the mid-1850s Swiss mountaineers had ascended most of the peaks and were eagerly sought as mountain guides. Edward Whymper reached the top of the Matterhorn in 1865 (after seven attempts), and in 1938 the last of the six great north faces of the Alps was climbed with the first ascent of the Eiger Nordwand (north face of the Eiger).

Geology and orogeny
Important geological concepts were established as naturalists began studying the rock formations of the Alps in the 18th century. In the mid-19th century, the now-defunct idea of geosynclines was used to explain the presence of "folded" mountain chains. This theory was replaced in the mid-20th century by the theory of plate tectonics.

The formation of the Alps (the Alpine orogeny) was an episodic process that began about 300 million years ago. In the Paleozoic Era the Pangaean supercontinent consisted of a single tectonic plate; it broke into separate plates during the Mesozoic Era and the Tethys sea developed between Laurasia and Gondwana during the Jurassic Period. The Tethys was later squeezed between colliding plates causing the formation of mountain ranges called the Alpide belt, from Gibraltar through the Himalayas to Indonesia—a process that began at the end of the Mesozoic and continues into the present. The formation of the Alps was a segment of this orogenic process, caused by the collision between the African and the Eurasian plates that began in the late Cretaceous Period.

Under extreme compressive stresses and pressure, marine sedimentary rocks were uplifted, forming characteristic recumbent folds, and thrust faults. As the rising peaks underwent erosion, a layer of marine flysch sediments was deposited in the foreland basin, and the sediments became involved in younger folds as the orogeny progressed. Coarse sediments from the continual uplift and erosion were later deposited in foreland areas north of the Alps. These regions in Switzerland and Bavaria are well-developed, containing classic examples of flysch, which is sedimentary rock formed during mountain building.

The Alpine orogeny occurred in ongoing cycles through to the Paleogene causing differences in folded structures, with a late-stage orogeny causing the development of the Jura Mountains. A series of tectonic events in the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods caused different paleogeographic regions. The Alps are subdivided by different lithology (rock composition) and nappe structures according to the orogenic events that affected them. The geological subdivision differentiates the Western, Eastern Alps, and Southern Alps: the Helveticum in the north, the Penninicum and Austroalpine system in the centre and, south of the Periadriatic Seam, the Southern Alpine system.

According to geologist Stefan Schmid, because the Western Alps underwent a metamorphic event in the Cenozoic Era while the Austroalpine peaks underwent an event in the Cretaceous Period, the two areas show distinct differences in nappe formations. Flysch deposits in the Southern Alps of Lombardy probably occurred in the Cretaceous or later.

Peaks in France, Italy and Switzerland lie in the "Houillière zone", which consists of basement with sediments from the Mesozoic Era. High "massifs" with external sedimentary cover are more common in the Western Alps and were affected by Neogene Period thin-skinned thrusting whereas the Eastern Alps have comparatively few high peaked massifs. Similarly the peaks in eastern Switzerland extending to western Austria (Helvetic nappes) consist of thin-skinned sedimentary folding that detached from former basement rock.

In simple terms, the structure of the Alps consists of layers of rock of European, African, and oceanic (Tethyan) origin. The bottom nappe structure is of continental European origin, above which are stacked marine sediment nappes, topped off by nappes derived from the African plate. The Matterhorn is an example of the ongoing orogeny and shows evidence of great folding. The tip of the mountain consists of gneisses from the African plate; the base of the peak, below the glaciated area, consists of European basement rock. The sequence of Tethyan marine sediments and their oceanic basement is sandwiched between rock derived from the African and European plates.

The core regions of the Alpine orogenic belt have been folded and fractured in such a manner that erosion produced the characteristic steep vertical peaks of the Swiss Alps that rise seemingly straight out of the foreland areas. Peaks such as Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and high peaks in the Pennine Alps, the Briançonnais, and Hohe Tauern consist of layers of rock from the various orogenies including exposures of basement rock.

Due to the ever-present geologic instability, earthquakes continue in the Alps to this day. Typically, the largest earthquakes in the alps have been between magnitude 6 and 7 on the Richter scale. Geodetic measurements show ongoing topographic uplift at rates of up to about 2.5 mm per year in the North, Western and Central Alps, and at ~1 mm per year in the Eastern and South-Western Alps. The underlying mechanisms that jointly drive the present-day uplift pattern are the isostatic rebound due to the melting of the last glacial maximum ice-cap or long-term erosion, detachment of the Western Alpine subducting slab, mantle convection as well as ongoing horizontal convergence between Africa and Europe, but their relative contributions to the uplift of the Alps are difficult to quantify and likely to vary significantly in space and time.

Minerals
The Alps are a source of minerals that have been mined for thousands of years. In the 8th to 6th centuries, BC during the Hallstatt culture, Celtic tribes mined copper; later the Romans mined gold for coins in the Bad Gastein area. Erzberg in Styria furnishes high-quality iron ore for the steel industry. Crystals, such as cinnabar, amethyst, and quartz, are found throughout much of the Alpine region. The cinnabar deposits in Slovenia are a notable source of cinnabar pigments.

Alpine crystals have been studied and collected for hundreds of years and began to be classified in the 18th century. Leonhard Euler studied the shapes of crystals, and by the 19th-century crystal hunting was common in Alpine regions. David Friedrich Wiser amassed a collection of 8000 crystals that he studied and documented. In the 20th century Robert Parker wrote a well-known work about the rock crystals of the Swiss Alps; at the same period a commission was established to control and standardize the naming of Alpine minerals.

Glaciers
In the Miocene Epoch the mountains underwent severe erosion because of glaciation, which was noted in the mid-19th century by naturalist Louis Agassiz who presented a paper proclaiming the Alps were covered in ice at various intervals—a theory he formed when studying rocks near his Neuchâtel home which he believed originated to the west in the Bernese Oberland. Because of his work he came to be known as the "father of the ice-age concept" although other naturalists before him put forth similar ideas.

Agassiz studied glacier movement in the 1840s at the Unteraar Glacier where he found the glacier moved 100 m per year, more rapidly in the middle than at the edges. His work was continued by other scientists and now a permanent laboratory exists inside a glacier under the Jungfraujoch, devoted exclusively to the study of Alpine glaciers.

Glaciers pick up rocks and sediment with them as they flow. This causes erosion and the formation of valleys over time. The Inn valley is an example of a valley carved by glaciers during the ice ages with a typical terraced structure caused by erosion. Eroded rocks from the most recent ice age lie at the bottom of the valley while the top of the valley consists of erosion from earlier ice ages. Glacial valleys have characteristically steep walls (reliefs); valleys with lower reliefs and talus slopes are remnants of glacial troughs or previously infilled valleys. Moraines, piles of rock picked up during the movement of the glacier, accumulate at edges, centre, and the terminus of glaciers.

Alpine glaciers can be straight rivers of ice, long sweeping rivers, spread in a fan-like shape (Piedmont glaciers), and curtains of ice that hang from vertical slopes of the mountain peaks. The stress of the movement causes the ice to break and crack loudly, perhaps explaining why the mountains were believed to be home to dragons in the medieval period. The cracking creates unpredictable and dangerous crevasses, often invisible under new snowfall, which causes the greatest danger to mountaineers.

Glaciers end in ice caves (the Rhône Glacier), by trailing into a lake or river, or by shedding snowmelt on a meadow. Sometimes a piece of glacier will detach or break resulting in flooding, property damage, and loss of life.

High levels of precipitation cause the glaciers to descend to permafrost levels in some areas whereas in other, more arid regions, glaciers remain above about the 3500 m level. The 1817 km2 of the Alps covered by glaciers in 1876 had shrunk to 1342 km2 by 1973, resulting in decreased river run-off levels. Forty percent of the glaciation in Austria has disappeared since 1850, and 30% of that in Switzerland.

Although the Alpine topography shows marked glacial morphologies, the mechanisms by which glacial reshaping occurs are unclear. Numerical modeling suggests that glacial erosion propagates from low elevations to high elevations leading to an early increase of local relief followed by lowering of the mean orogen elevation.

Rivers and lakes

The Alps provide lowland Europe with drinking water, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. Although the area is only about 11% of the surface area of Europe, the Alps provide up to 90% of water to lowland Europe, particularly to arid areas and during the summer months. Cities such as Milan depend on 80% of water from Alpine runoff. Water from the rivers is used in at least 550 hydroelectricity power plants, considering only those producing at least 10MW of electricity.

Major European rivers flow from the Alps, such as the Rhine, the Rhône, the Inn, and the Po, all of which have headwaters in the Alps and flow into neighbouring countries, finally emptying into the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea. Other rivers such as the Danube have major tributaries flowing into them that originate in the Alps.

The Rhône is second to the Nile as a freshwater source to the Mediterranean Sea; the river begins as glacial meltwater, flows into Lake Geneva, and from there to France where one of its uses is to cool nuclear power plants. The Rhine originates in a 30 km2 area in Switzerland and represents almost 60% of water exported from the country. Tributary valleys, some of which are complicated, channel water to the main valleys which can experience flooding during the snowmelt season when rapid runoff causes debris torrents and swollen rivers.

The rivers form lakes, such as Lake Geneva, a crescent-shaped lake crossing the Swiss border with Lausanne on the Swiss side and the town of Evian-les-Bains on the French side. In Germany, the medieval St. Bartholomew's chapel was built on the south side of the Königssee, accessible only by boat or by climbing over the abutting peaks.

Additionally, the Alps have led to the creation of large lakes in Italy. For instance, the Sarca, the primary inflow of Lake Garda, originates in the Italian Alps. The Italian Lakes are a popular tourist destination since the Roman Era for their mild climate.

Scientists have been studying the impact of climate change and water use. For example, each year more water is diverted from rivers for snowmaking in the ski resorts, the effect of which is yet unknown. Furthermore, the decrease of glaciated areas combined with a succession of winters with lower-than-expected precipitation may have a future impact on the rivers in the Alps as well as an effect on the water availability to the lowlands.

Climate
The Alps are a classic example of what happens when a temperate area at lower altitude gives way to higher-elevation terrain. Elevations around the world that have cold climates similar to those of the polar regions have been called Alpine. A rise from sea level into the upper regions of the atmosphere causes the temperature to decrease (see adiabatic lapse rate). The effect of mountain chains on prevailing winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at the cost of a proportionate loss of temperature, often accompanied by precipitation in the form of snow or rain. The height of the Alps is sufficient to divide the weather patterns in Europe into a wet north and dry south because moisture is sucked from the air as it flows over the high peaks.

The severe weather in the Alps has been studied since the 18th century; particularly the weather patterns such as the seasonal foehn wind. Numerous weather stations were placed in the mountains early in the early 20th century, providing continuous data for climatologists. Some of the valleys are quite arid such as the Aosta Valley in Italy, the Maurienne in France, the Valais in Switzerland, and northern Tyrol.

The areas that are not arid and receive high precipitation experience periodic flooding from rapid snowmelt and runoff. The mean precipitation in the Alps ranges from a low of 2600 mm per year to 3600 mm per year, with the higher levels occurring at high altitudes. At altitudes between 1000 and 3,000 m, snowfall begins in November and accumulates through to April or May when the melt begins. Snow lines vary from 2400 to 3,000 m, above which the snow is permanent and the temperatures hover around the freezing point even during July and August. High-water levels in streams and rivers peak in June and July when the snow is still melting at the higher altitudes.

The Alps are split into five climatic zones, each with different vegetation. The climate, plant life, and animal life vary among the different sections or zones of the mountains. The lowest zone is the colline zone, which exists between 500 and 1000 m, depending on the location. The montane zone extends from 800 to 1,700 m, followed by the sub-Alpine zone from 1600 to 2,400 m. The Alpine zone, extending from tree line to the snow line, is followed by the glacial zone, which covers the glaciated areas of the mountain. Climatic conditions show variances within the same zones; for example, weather conditions at the head of a mountain valley, extending directly from the peaks, are colder and more severe than those at the mouth of a valley which tend to be less severe and receive less snowfall.

Various models of climate change have been projected into the 22nd century for the Alps, with an expectation that a trend toward increased temperatures will have an effect on snowfall, snowpack, glaciation, and river runoff. Significant changes, of both natural and anthropogenic origins, have already been diagnosed from observations,  including a 5.6% reduction per decade in snow cover duration over the last 50 years, which also highlights climate change adaptation needs due to impacts on the climate and regional socio-economic activities.
 * Climate change

Flora

Thirteen thousand species of plants have been identified in the Alpine regions. Alpine plants are grouped by habitat and soil type which can be limestone or non-calcareous. The habitats range from meadows, bogs, and woodland (deciduous and coniferous) areas to soil-less scree and moraines, and rock faces and ridges. A natural vegetation limit with altitude is given by the presence of the chief deciduous trees—oak, beech, ash and sycamore maple. These do not reach the same elevation, nor are they often found growing together, but their upper limit corresponds accurately enough to the change from a temperate to a colder climate that is further proved by a change in the presence of wild herbaceous vegetation. This limit usually lies about 1200 m above the sea on the north side of the Alps, but on the southern slopes it often rises to 1500 m, sometimes even to 1700 m.

Above the forestry, there is often a band of dwarf pine trees (Pinus mugo), which is in turn superseded by Alpenrosen, dwarf shrubs, typically Rhododendron ferrugineum (on acid soils) or Rhododendron hirsutum (on alkaline soils). Although Alpenrose prefers acidic soil, the plants are found throughout the region. Above the tree line is the area defined as "alpine" where in the alpine meadow plants are found that have adapted well to harsh conditions of cold temperatures, aridity, and high altitudes. The alpine area fluctuates greatly because of regional fluctuations in tree lines.

Alpine plants such as the Alpine gentian grow in abundance in areas such as the meadows above the Lauterbrunnental. Gentians are named after the Illyrian king Gentius, and 40 species of the early-spring blooming flower grow in the Alps, in a range of 1500 to 2,400 m. Writing about the gentians in Switzerland D. H. Lawrence described them as "darkening the day-time, torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom." Gentians tend to "appear" repeatedly as the spring blooming takes place at progressively later dates, moving from the lower altitude to the higher altitude meadows where the snow melts much later than in the valleys. On the highest rocky ledges, the spring flowers bloom in the summer.

At these higher altitudes, the plants tend to form isolated cushions. In the Alps, several species of flowering plants have been recorded above 4000 m, including Ranunculus glacialis, Androsace alpina and Saxifraga biflora. Eritrichium nanum, commonly known as the King of the Alps, is the most elusive of the alpine flowers, growing on rocky ridges at 2600 to 3,750 m. Perhaps the best known of the alpine plants is Edelweiss which grows in rocky areas and can be found at altitudes as low as 1200 m and as high as 3400 m. The plants that grow at the highest altitudes have adapted to conditions by specialization such as growing in rock screes that give protection from winds.

The extreme and stressful climatic conditions give way to the growth of plant species with secondary metabolites important for medicinal purposes. Origanum vulgare, Prunella vulgaris, Solanum nigrum, and Urtica dioica are some of the more useful medicinal species found in the Alps. Human interference has nearly exterminated the trees in many areas, and, except for the beech forests of the Austrian Alps, forests of deciduous trees are rarely found after the extreme deforestation between the 17th and 19th centuries. The vegetation has changed since the second half of the 20th century, as the high alpine meadows cease to be harvested for hay or used for grazing which eventually might result in a regrowth of the forest. In some areas, the modern practice of building ski runs by mechanical means has destroyed the underlying tundra from which the plant life cannot recover during the non-skiing months, whereas areas that still practice a natural piste type of ski slope building preserve the fragile underlayers.

Fauna
The Alps are a habitat for 30,000 species of wildlife, ranging from the tiniest snow fleas to brown bears, many of which have made adaptations to the harsh cold conditions and high altitudes to the point that some only survive in specific micro-climates either directly above or below the snow line.

The largest mammal to live in the highest altitudes are the alpine ibex, which have been sighted as high as 3000 m. The ibex live in caves and descend to eat the succulent alpine grasses. Classified as antelopes, chamois are smaller than ibex and found throughout the Alps, living above the tree line and are common in the entire alpine range. Areas of the eastern Alps are still home to brown bears. In Switzerland the canton of Bern was named for the bears but the last bear is recorded as having been killed in 1792 above Kleine Scheidegg by three hunters from Grindelwald.

Many rodents such as voles live underground. Marmots live almost exclusively above the tree line as high as 2700 m. They hibernate in large groups to provide warmth, and can be found in all areas of the Alps, in large colonies they build beneath the alpine pastures. Golden eagles and bearded vultures are the largest birds to be found in the Alps; they nest high on rocky ledges and can be found at altitudes of 2400 m. The most common bird is the alpine chough which can be found scavenging at climber's huts or the Jungfraujoch, a high-altitude tourist destination.

Reptiles such as adders and vipers live up to the snow line; because they cannot bear the cold temperatures they hibernate underground and soak up the warmth on rocky ledges. The high-altitude Alpine salamanders have adapted to living above the snow line by giving birth to fully developed young rather than laying eggs. Brown trout can be found in the streams up to the snow line. Molluscs such as the wood snail live up the snow line. Popularly gathered as food, the snails are now protected.

Several species of moths live in the Alps, some of which are believed to have evolved in the same habitat up to 120 million years ago, long before the Alps were created. Blue butterflies can commonly be seen drinking from the snowmelt; some species of blues fly as high as 1800 m. The butterflies tend to be large, such as those from the swallowtail Parnassius family, with a habitat that ranges to 1800 m. Twelve species of beetles have habitats up to the snow line; the most beautiful and formerly collected for its colours but now protected is Rosalia alpina. Spiders, such as the large wolf spider, live above the snow line and can be seen as high as 400 m. Scorpions can be found in the Italian Alps.

Some of the species of moths and insects show evidence of having been indigenous to the area from as long ago as the Alpine orogeny. In Émosson in Valais, Switzerland, dinosaur tracks were found in the 1970s, dating probably from the Triassic Period.

Prehistory

When the ice melted after the Würm glaciation, paleolithic settlements were established along the lake shores and in cave systems. Evidence of human habitation has been found in caves near the Vercors Cave System, close to Grenoble and Echirolles. In Austria, the Mondsee lake shows evidence of houses built on piles. Standing stones have been found in the Alpine areas of France and Italy. About 200,000 drawings and etchings have been documented, and are known as the Rock Drawings in Valcamonica.

A mummy of a neolithic human, known as Ötzi, was discovered on the Similaun. His clothing lets modern people assume that he was an alpine farmer, while the location and manner of his death suggests that Ötzi was traveling. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of Ötzi, has shown that he belongs to the K1 subclade.

From the 13th to the 6th century BC much of the Alps was settled by the Germanic peoples, Lombards, Alemanni, Bavarii, and Franks. Celt tribes settled in modern-day Switzerland between 1500 and 1000 BC. The Raeti lived in the eastern regions, while the west was occupied by the Helvetii and the Allobroges settled in the Rhône valley and in Savoy. The Ligures and Adriatic Veneti lived in Northwest Italy and Triveneto respectively. The Celts mined salt in areas such as Salzburg, where evidence was found of the Hallstatt culture. By the 6th century BC the La Tène culture was well established in the region, and became known for high quality Celtic art.

Between 430 and 400 BC prolonged warfare in the Alps resulted in the devastation of agricultural land and human settlements, ultimately triggering the enslavement of men, women, and children, goods had to be imported as a result. The Etruscan civilization responded to raids by the Massalia and acquired absolute control over the Alpine trade routes. Aggressors in modern-day Italy were dealt with and an alliance was formed with the Celts. The grip of the Etruscan settlements broke down, as the Roman political system expanded, so as to take control over Alpine trade routes that connected human settlements in the Alps with settlements in the Mediterranean.

During the Second Punic War in 218 BC, the Carthage general Hannibal initiated one of the most celebrated achievements of any military force in ancient warfare, recorded as Hannibal crossing the Alps. The Roman people built roads along the Alpine mountain passes, which continued to be used through the medieval period. Roman road markers can still be found on the Alpine mountain passes.

During the Gallic Wars in 58 BC Julius Caesar defeated the Helvetii. The Rhaetian continued to resist but their territory was eventually conquered when the Romans crossed the Danube valley and defeated the Brigantes. The Romans built settlements in the Alps. In towns such as Aosta, Martigny, Lausanne, and Partenkirchen remains of villas, arenas, and temples have been discovered.

Christianity, feudalism, and Napoleonic wars
Christianity was established in the Alps by the Roman people. Monasteries and churches were constructed, even at high Alpine altitudes. The Franks expanded their Carolingian Empire, while the Baiuvarii introduced feudalism in the eastern Alps. The construction of castles in the Alps supported the growing number of dukedoms and kingdoms. Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, still has intricate frescoes, and excellent examples of Gothic art. The Château de Chillon is preserved as an example of medieval architecture. There are several important alpine saints and one such one is Saint Maurice. Much of the medieval period was a time of power struggles between competing dynasties such as the House of Savoy, the Visconti of Milan, and the House of Habsburg.

The Great St Bernard Hospice, built in the 9th or 10th centuries, at the summit of the Great Saint Bernard Pass was a shelter for humans and destination for pilgrims. In 1291, to protect themselves from incursions by the House of Habsburg, four Alpine cantons drew up the Federal Charter of 1291, which is considered to be a declaration of independence from neighboring kingdoms. After a series of battles fought in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, more cantons joined the confederacy and by the 16th century, Switzerland was established as a sovereign state.

In the Alps, the War of the Spanish Succession fallout resulted in a 1713 treaty, part of the Peace of Utrecht, which relocated the Western Alps border along the watersheds. Historically, the Alps were used to determine the borders of political and administrative gangs, but the Peace of Utrecht was the first significant body of treaty that considered geographical conditions. The Alps were carved up and borders were agreed, so that enclaves in the Alps could be eliminated.

During the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th century and early 19th century, Napoleon annexed territory formerly controlled by the House of Habsburg, and the House of Savoy. In 1798, the Helvetic Republic was established, two years later an army across the Great St Bernard Pass. In 1799 the Russian imperial military engaged the revolutionary French army in the Alps, this episode has been recorded as significant achievement in mountain warfare. In October 1799 the troops commanded by Alexander Suvorov were surrounded in the Alps by much larger French troops. The Russian troops broke out, mauled the French troops, and retreated through the Panix Pass.

After the fall of Napoleon, many alpine countries developed heavy protections to prevent further invasion. Thus, Savoy built a series of fortifications to protect the major alpine passes, such as the col du Mont-Cenis, which was crossed by Charlemagne to obliterate the Lombards.

In the 19th century, the monasteries built in the Alps to shelter humans became tourist destinations. The Benedictines had built monasteries in Lucerne, and Oberammergau. The Cistercians built their temple at Lake Constance. Meanwhile, the Augustinians maintained abbeys in Savoy and one in Interlaken.

Exploration

Radiocarbon-dated charcoal placed around 50,000 years ago was found in the Drachloch (Dragon's Hole) cave above the village of Vattis in the canton of St. Gallen, proving that the high peaks were visited by prehistoric people. Seven bear skulls from the cave may have been buried by the same prehistoric people. The peaks, however, were mostly ignored except for a few notable examples, and long left to the exclusive attention of the people of the adjoining valleys. The mountain peaks were seen as terrifying, the abode of dragons and demons, to the point that people blindfolded themselves to cross the Alpine passes. The glaciers remained a mystery and many still believed the highest areas to be inhabited by dragons.

Charles VII of France ordered his chamberlain to climb Mont Aiguille in 1356. The knight reached the summit of Rocciamelone where he left a bronze triptych of three crosses, a feat which he conducted with the use of ladders to traverse the ice. In 1492, Antoine de Ville climbed Mont Aiguille, without reaching the summit, an experience he described as "horrifying and terrifying." Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by variations of light in the higher altitudes, and climbed a mountain—scholars are uncertain which one; some believe it may have been Monte Rosa. From his description of a "blue like that of a gentian" sky it is thought that he reached a significantly high altitude. In the 18th century four Chamonix men almost made the summit of Mont Blanc but were overcome by altitude sickness and snowblindness.

Conrad Gessner was the first naturalist to ascend the mountains in the 16th century, to study them, writing that in the mountains he found the "theatre of the Lord". By the 19th century more naturalists began to arrive to explore, study and conquer the high peaks. Two men who first explored the regions of ice and snow were Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740–1799) in the Pennine Alps, and the Benedictine monk of Disentis Placidus a Spescha (1752–1833). Born in Geneva, Saussure was enamoured with the mountains from an early age; he left a law career to become a naturalist and spent many years trekking through the Bernese Oberland, the Savoy, the Piedmont and Valais, studying the glaciers and geology, as he became an early proponent of the theory of rock upheaval. Saussure, in 1787, was a member of the third ascent of Mont Blanc—today the summits of all the peaks have been climbed.

The Romantics and Alpinists
Albrecht von Haller's poem Die Alpen, published in 1732 described the mountains as an area of mythical purity. Jean-Jacques Rousseau presented the Alps as a place of allure and beauty, in his novel Julie, or the New Heloise, published in 1761. Later the first wave of Romanticism such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and J. M. W. Turner came to admire the Alpine scenery; Wordsworth visited the area in 1790, writing of his experiences in The Prelude (1799). Schiller later wrote the play William Tell (1804), which tells the story of the legendary Swiss marksman William Tell as part of the greater Swiss struggle for independence from the Habsburg Empire in the early 14th century. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Alpine countries began to see an influx of poets, artists, and musicians, as visitors came to experience the sublime effects of monumental nature.

In 1816, Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley visited Geneva and all three were inspired by the scenery in their writings. During these visits Shelley wrote the poem "Mont Blanc", Byron wrote "The Prisoner of Chillon" and the dramatic poem Manfred, and Mary Shelley, who found the scenery overwhelming, conceived the idea for the novel Frankenstein in her villa on the shores of Lake Geneva amid a thunderstorm. When Coleridge travelled to Chamonix, he declaimed, in defiance of Shelley, who had signed himself "Atheos" in the guestbook of the Hotel de Londres near Montenvers, "Who would be, who could be an atheist in this valley of wonders".

By the mid-19th century scientists began to arrive en masse to study the geology and ecology of the region.

From the beginning of the 19th century, the tourism and mountaineering development of the Alps began. In the early years of the "golden age of alpinism" initially scientific activities were mixed with sport, for example by the physicist John Tyndall, with the first ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper being the highlight. In the later years, the "silver age of alpinism", the focus was on mountain sports and climbing. The first president of the Alpine Club, John Ball, is considered the discoverer of the Dolomites, which for decades were the focus of climbers like Paul Grohmann, Michael Innerkofler and Angelo Dibona.

The Nazis

In autumn 1932, Adolf Hitler commissioned the first of a series of refurbishments, which eventually turned a mountain cottage, later named Berghof, into a fortified citadel. This domestic, but representative, fortification had two small bedrooms, and a full bathroom, planned by the Munich architect and NSDAP member Josef Neumaier. Guests, such as Rudolf Hess, stayed over, sleeping in tents or over the garage.

The Alps, Adolf Hitler, and improbable powerful organizations have been subject to crime fiction. The Alps acted as a geographical barrier to Italy, and the Alps for centuries were permeated with established smuggling routes, known as green line. After World War II, members of the Schutzstaffel that feared prosecution as war criminals, known in modern English only as SS, disappeared into a crowd of refugees. Massive numbers of refugees entered Italy illegally, by navigating the Alps.

Undocumented migrants
Smugglers of humans claim that crossing the Alps is less dangerous, or deadly, than traveling 355 km on water between Tripoli and Lampedusa with a tramp ship (carretta del mare) or a dinghy. Undocumented migrants, visa overstayers, false tourists, asylum seekers, and other clandestine humans, lose their lives crossing the Alps. The exact number of smuggled humans who die a brutal death in the Alps can only be estimated.

Largest Alpine cities
The largest city within the Alps is the city of Grenoble in France. Other larger and important cities within the Alps with over 100,000 inhabitants are in Tyrol with Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), Trento (Italy) and Innsbruck (Austria). Larger cities outside the Alps are Milan, Verona, Turin (Italy), Munich (Germany), Graz, Vienna, Salzburg (Austria), Ljubljana, Maribor, Kranj (Slovenia), Zürich, Geneva (Switzerland), Nice and Lyon (France).

Cities with over 100,000 inhabitants in the Alps are:

Alpine people and culture
The population of the region is 14 million spread across eight countries. On the rim of the mountains, on the plateaus, and on the plains the economy consists of manufacturing and service jobs whereas in the higher altitudes and the mountains farming is still essential to the economy. Farming and forestry continue to be mainstays of Alpine culture, industries that provide for export to the cities and maintain the mountain ecology.

The Alpine regions are multicultural and linguistically diverse. Dialects are common and vary from valley to valley and region to region. In the Slavic Alps alone 19 dialects have been identified. Some of the Romance dialects spoken in the French, Swiss and Italian alps of Aosta Valley derive from Arpitan, while the southern part of the western range is related to Occitan; the German dialects derive from Germanic tribal languages. Romansh, spoken by two percent of the population in southeast Switzerland, is an ancient Rhaeto-Romanic language derived from Latin, remnants of ancient Celtic languages and perhaps Etruscan.

Much of the Alpine culture is unchanged since the medieval period when skills that guaranteed survival in the mountain valleys and the highest villages became mainstays, leading to strong traditions of carpentry, woodcarving, baking, pastry-making, and cheesemaking.

Farming has been a traditional occupation for centuries, although it became less dominant in the 20th century with the advent of tourism. Grazing and pasture land are limited because of the steep and rocky topography of the Alps. In mid-June, cows are moved to the highest pastures close to the snowline, where they are watched by herdsmen who stay in the high altitudes often living in stone huts or wooden barns during the summers. Villagers celebrate the day the cows are herded up to the pastures and again when they return in mid-September. The Almabtrieb, Alpabzug, Alpabfahrt, Désalpes ("coming down from the alps") is celebrated by decorating the cows with garlands and enormous cowbells while the farmers dress in traditional costumes.

Cheesemaking is an ancient tradition in most Alpine countries. A wheel of cheese from the Emmental in Switzerland can weigh up to 45 kg, and the Beaufort in Savoy can weigh up to 70 kg. Owners of the cows traditionally receive from the cheesemakers a portion about the proportion of the cows' milk from the summer months in the high alps. Haymaking is an important farming activity in mountain villages that have become somewhat mechanized in recent years, although the slopes are so steep that scythes are usually necessary to cut the grass. Hay is normally brought in twice a year, often also on festival days.

In the high villages, people live in homes built according to medieval designs that withstand cold winters. The kitchen is separated from the living area (called the stube, the area of the home heated by a stove), and second-floor bedrooms benefit from rising heat. The typical Swiss chalet originated in the Bernese Oberland. Chalets often face south or downhill and are built of solid wood, with a steeply gabled roof to allow accumulated snow to slide off easily. Stairs leading to upper levels are sometimes built on the outside, and balconies are sometimes enclosed.

Food is passed from the kitchen to the stube, where the dining room table is placed. Some meals are communal, such as fondue, where a pot is set in the middle of the table for each person to dip into. Other meals are still served traditionally on carved wooden plates. Furniture has been traditionally elaborately carved and in many Alpine countries, carpentry skills are passed from generation to generation. Roofs are traditionally constructed from Alpine rocks such as pieces of schist, gneiss, or slate. Such chalets are typically found in the higher parts of the valleys, as in the Maurienne valley in Savoy, where the amount of snow during the cold months is important. The inclination of the roof cannot exceed 40%, allowing the snow to stay on top, thereby functioning as insulation from the cold. In the lower areas where the forests are widespread, wooden tiles are traditionally used. Commonly made of Norway spruce, they are called "tavaillon".

In the German-speaking parts of the Alps (Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol, Liechtenstein and Switzerland), there is a strong tradition of Alpine folk culture. Old traditions are carefully maintained among inhabitants of Alpine areas, even though this is seldom obvious to the visitor: many people are members of cultural associations where the Alpine folk culture is cultivated. At cultural events, traditional folk costume (in German Tracht) is expected: typically lederhosen for men and dirndls for women. Visitors can get a glimpse of the rich customs of the Alps at public Volksfeste. Even when large events feature only a little folk culture, all participants take part with gusto. Good opportunities to see local people celebrating the traditional culture occur at the many fairs, wine festivals, and firefighting festivals which fill weekends in the countryside from spring to autumn. Alpine festivals vary from country to country. Frequently they include music (e.g. the playing of Alpenhorns), dance (e.g. Schuhplattler), sports (e.g. wrestling marches and archery), as well as traditions with pagan roots such as the lighting of fires on Walpurgis Night and Saint John's Eve. Many areas celebrate Fastnacht in the weeks before Lent. Folk costume also continues to be worn for most weddings and festivals.

Tourism

The Alps are one of the more popular tourist destinations in the world with many resorts such as Oberstdorf, in Bavaria, Saalbach in Austria, Davos in Switzerland, Chamonix in France, and Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy recording more than a million annual visitors. With over 120 million visitors a year, tourism is integral to the Alpine economy with much of it coming from winter sports, although summer visitors are also an important component.

The tourism industry began in the early 19th century when foreigners visited the Alps, travelled to the bases of the mountains to enjoy the scenery, and stayed at the spa-resorts. Large hotels were built during the Belle Époque; cog-railways, built early in the 20th century, brought tourists to ever-higher elevations, with the Jungfraubahn terminating at the Jungfraujoch, well above the eternal snow-line, after going through a tunnel in Eiger. During this period winter sports were slowly introduced: in 1882 the first figure skating championship was held in St. Moritz, and downhill skiing became a popular sport with English visitors early in the 20th century, as the first ski-lift was installed in 1908 above Grindelwald.

In the first half of the 20th century the Olympic Winter Games were held three times in Alpine venues: the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France; the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland; and the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. During World War II the winter games were cancelled but after that time the Winter Games have been held in St. Moritz (1948), Cortina d'Ampezzo (1956), Innsbruck, Austria (1964 and 1976), Grenoble, France, (1968), Albertville, France, (1992), and Turin (2006). In 1930, the Lauberhorn Rennen (Lauberhorn Race), was run for the first time on the Lauberhorn above Wengen; the equally demanding Hahnenkamm was first run in the same year in Kitzbühl, Austria. Both races continue to be held each January on successive weekends. The Lauberhorn is the more strenuous downhill race at 4.5 km and poses danger to racers who reach 130 km/h within seconds of leaving the start gate.

During the post-World War I period, ski lifts were built in Swiss and Austrian towns to accommodate winter visitors, and summer tourism continued to be important. By the mid-20th century the popularity of downhill skiing increased greatly as it became more accessible and in the 1970s several new villages were built in France devoted almost exclusively to skiing, such as Les Menuires. Until this point, Austria and Switzerland had been the traditional and more popular destinations for winter sports, and by the end of the 20th century and into the early 21st century, France, Italy, and Tyrol began to see increases in winter visitors. From 1980 to the present, ski-lifts have been modernized and snow-making machines installed at many resorts, leading to mounting concerns regarding the loss of traditional Alpine culture and uncertainties regarding sustainable development. For instance the number of ski resorts and piste kilometres has declined since 2015, a likely result of climatic change.

Avalanche/snow-slide

 * 17th-century French-Italian border avalanche: in the 17th century about 2500 people were killed by an avalanche in a village on the French-Italian border.
 * 19th century Zermatt avalanche: in the 19th century, 120 homes in a village near Zermatt were destroyed by an avalanche.
 * December 13, 1916 Marmolada-mountain-avalanche
 * 1950–1951 winter-of-terror avalanches
 * February 10, 1970 Val d'Isère avalanche
 * February 9, 1999 Montroc avalanche
 * February 21, 1999 Evolène avalanche
 * February 23, 1999, Galtür avalanche, the deadliest avalanche in the Alps in 40 years
 * July 2014 Mont-Blanc avalanche
 * January 13, 2016 Les-Deux-Alpes avalanche
 * January 18, 2016 Valfréjus avalanche
 * July 3, 2022 Marmolada serac collapse

Transportation

The region is serviced by 4200 km of roads used by six million vehicles per year. Train travel is well established in the Alps, with, for instance 120 km of track for every 1000 km2 in a country such as Switzerland. Most of Europe's highest railways are located there. In 2007, the new 34.57 km Lötschberg Base Tunnel was opened, which circumvents the 100 years older Lötschberg Tunnel. With the opening of the 57.1 km Gotthard Base Tunnel on June 1, 2016, it bypasses the Gotthard Tunnel built in the 19th century and realizes the first flat route through the Alps.

Some high mountain villages are car-free either because of inaccessibility or by choice. Wengen, and Zermatt (in Switzerland) are accessible only by cable car or cog-rail trains. Avoriaz (in France), is car-free, with other Alpine villages considering becoming car-free zones or limiting the number of cars for reasons of sustainability of the fragile Alpine terrain.

The lower regions and larger towns of the Alps are well-served by motorways and main roads, but higher mountain passes and byroads, which are amongst the highest in Europe, can be treacherous even in summer due to steep slopes. Many passes are closed in winter. Several airports around the Alps (and some within), as well as long-distance rail links from all neighbouring countries, afford large numbers of travellers easy access.

title: Alps


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Albert Camus

Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel.

Camus was born in Algeria during the French colonization, to pied-noir parents. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and gave many lectures around the world. He married twice but had many extramarital affairs. Camus was politically active; he was part of the left that opposed Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union because of their totalitarianism. Camus was a moralist and leaned towards anarcho-syndicalism. He was part of many organisations seeking European integration. During the Algerian War (1954–1962), he kept a neutral stance, advocating a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria, a position that was rejected by most parties.

Philosophically, Camus's views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. Some consider Camus's work to show him to be an existentialist, even though he himself firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime.

Early years and education
Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in a working-class neighbourhood in Mondovi (present-day Dréan), in French Algeria. His mother, Catherine Hélène Camus, was French with Balearic Spanish ancestry. She was deaf and illiterate. He never knew his father, Lucien Camus, a poor French agricultural worker killed in action while serving with a Zouave regiment in October 1914, during World War I. Camus, his mother, and other relatives lived without many basic material possessions during his childhood in the Belcourt section of Algiers. Camus was a second-generation French inhabitant of Algeria, which was a French territory from 1830 until 1962. His paternal grandfather, along with many others of his generation, had moved to Algeria for a better life during the first decades of the 19th century. Hence, he was called a pied-noir – a slang term for people of French and other European descent born in Algeria. His identity and poor background had a substantial effect on his later life. Nevertheless, Camus was a French citizen and enjoyed more rights than Arab and Berber Algerians under indigénat. During his childhood, he developed a love for football and swimming.

Under the influence of his teacher Louis Germain, Camus gained a scholarship in 1924 to continue his studies at a prestigious lyceum (secondary school) near Algiers. Germain immediately noticed his lively intelligence and his desire to learn. In middle school, he gave Camus free lessons to prepare him for the 1924 scholarship competition – despite the fact that his grandmother had a destiny in store for him as a manual worker so that he could immediately contribute to the maintenance of the family. Camus maintained great gratitude and affection towards Louis Germain throughout his life and to whom he dedicated his speech for accepting the Nobel Prize. Having received the news of the awarding of the prize, he wrote:

"But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened."

In a letter dated 30 April 1959, Germain lovingly reciprocated the warm feelings towards his former pupil, calling him "my little Camus".

In 1930, at the age of 17, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Because it is a transmitted disease, he moved out of his home and stayed with his uncle Gustave Acault, a butcher, who influenced the young Camus. It was at that time he turned to philosophy, with the mentoring of his philosophy teacher Jean Grenier. He was impressed by ancient Greek philosophers and Friedrich Nietzsche. During that time, he was only able to study part time. To earn money, he took odd jobs, including as a private tutor, car parts clerk, and assistant at the Meteorological Institute.

In 1933, Camus enrolled at the University of Algiers and completed his licence de philosophie (BA) in 1936 after presenting his thesis on Plotinus. Camus developed an interest in early Christian philosophers, but Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer had paved the way towards pessimism and atheism. Camus also studied novelist-philosophers such as Stendhal, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Franz Kafka. In 1933, he also met Simone Hié, then a partner of Camus's friend, who later became his first wife.

Camus played as goalkeeper for the Racing Universitaire d'Alger junior team from 1928 to 1930. The sense of team spirit, fraternity, and common purpose appealed to him enormously. In match reports, he was often praised for playing with passion and courage. Any football ambitions, however, disappeared when he contracted tuberculosis. Camus drew parallels among football, human existence, morality, and personal identity. For him, the simplistic morality of football contradicted the complicated morality imposed by authorities such as the state and church.

Formative years
In 1934, Camus was in a relationship with Simone Hié. Simone had an addiction to morphine, a drug she used to ease her menstrual pains. His uncle Gustave did not approve of the relationship, but Camus married Hié to help her fight the addiction. He subsequently discovered she was in a relationship with her doctor at the same time and the couple later divorced.

Camus joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in early 1935. He saw it as a way to "fight inequalities between Europeans and 'natives' in Algeria", even though he was not a Marxist. He explained: "We might see communism as a springboard and asceticism that prepares the ground for more spiritual activities." Camus left the PCF a year later. In 1936, the independence-minded Algerian Communist Party (PCA) was founded, and Camus joined it after his mentor Grenier advised him to do so. Camus's main role within the PCA was to organise the Théâtre du Travail ('Workers' Theatre'). Camus was also close to the Parti du Peuple Algérien (Algerian People's Party [PPA]), which was a moderate anti-colonialist/nationalist party. As tensions in the interwar period escalated, the Stalinist PCA and PPA broke ties. Camus was expelled from the PCA for refusing to toe the party line. This series of events sharpened his belief in human dignity. Camus's mistrust of bureaucracies that aimed for efficiency instead of justice grew. He continued his involvement with theatre and renamed his group Théâtre de l'Equipe ('Theatre of the Team'). Some of his scripts were the basis for his later novels.

In 1938, Camus began working for the leftist newspaper Alger républicain (founded by Pascal Pia), as he had strong anti-fascist feelings, and the rise of fascist regimes in Europe was worrying him. By then, Camus had developed strong feelings against authoritarian colonialism as he witnessed the harsh treatment of the Arabs and Berbers by French authorities. Alger républicain was banned in 1940 and Camus flew to Paris to take a new job at Paris-Soir as layout editor. In Paris, he almost completed his "first cycle" of works dealing with the absurd and the meaningless: the novel L'Étranger (The Outsider [UK] or The Stranger [US]), the philosophical essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), and the play Caligula. Each cycle consisted of a novel, an essay, and a theatrical play.

World War II, Resistance and Combat
Soon after Camus moved to Paris, the outbreak of World War II began to affect France. Camus volunteered to join the army but was not accepted because he had once had tuberculosis. As the Germans were marching towards Paris, Camus fled. He was laid off from Paris-Soir and ended up in Lyon, where he married pianist and mathematician Francine Faure on 3 December 1940. Camus and Faure moved back to Algeria (Oran), where he taught in primary schools. Because of his tuberculosis, he moved to the French Alps on medical advice. There he began writing his second cycle of works, this time dealing with revolt – a novel, La Peste (The Plague), and a play, Le Malentendu (The Misunderstanding). By 1943 he was known because of his earlier work. He returned to Paris, where he met and became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre. He also became part of a circle of intellectuals, which included Simone de Beauvoir and André Breton. Among them was the actress María Casares, who later had an affair with Camus.

Camus took an active role in the underground resistance movement against the Germans during the French Occupation. Upon his arrival in Paris, he started working as a journalist and editor of the banned newspaper Combat. Camus used a pseudonym for his Combat articles and used false ID cards to avoid being captured. He continued writing for the paper after the liberation of France, composing almost daily editorials under his real name. During that period he composed four Lettres à un Ami Allemand ('Letters to a German Friend'), explaining why resistance was necessary.

Post–World War II
After the War, Camus lived in Paris with Faure, who gave birth to twins, Catherine and Jean, in 1945. Camus was now a celebrated writer known for his role in the Resistance. He gave lectures at various universities in the United States and Latin America during two separate trips. He also visited Algeria once more, only to leave disappointed by the continued oppressive colonial policies, which he had warned about many times. During this period he completed the second cycle of his work, with the essay L'Homme révolté (The Rebel). Camus attacked totalitarian communism while advocating libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism. Upsetting many of his colleagues and contemporaries in France with his rejection of communism, the book brought about the final split with Sartre. His relations with the Marxist Left deteriorated further during the Algerian War.

Camus was a strong supporter of European integration in various marginal organisations working towards that end. In 1944, he founded the Comité français pour la féderation européenne ('French Committee for the European Federation' [CFFE]), declaring that Europe "can only evolve along the path of economic progress, democracy, and peace if the nation-states become a federation." In 1947–48, he founded the Groupes de Liaison Internationale (GLI), a trade union movement in the context of revolutionary syndicalism (syndicalisme révolutionnaire). His main aim was to express the positive side of surrealism and existentialism, rejecting the negativity and the nihilism of André Breton. Camus also raised his voice against the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the totalitarian tendencies of Franco's regime in Spain.

Camus had numerous affairs, particularly an irregular and eventually public affair with the Spanish-born actress María Casares, with whom he had extensive correspondence. Faure did not take this affair lightly. She had a mental breakdown and needed hospitalisation in the early 1950s. Camus, who felt guilty, withdrew from public life and was slightly depressed for some time.

In 1957, Camus received the news that he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. This came as a shock to him; he anticipated André Malraux would win the award. At age 44, he was the second-youngest recipient of the prize, after Rudyard Kipling, who was 42. After this he began working on his autobiography Le Premier Homme (The First Man) in an attempt to examine "moral learning". He also turned to the theatre once more. Financed by the money he received with his Nobel Prize, he adapted and directed for the stage Dostoyevsky's novel Demons. The play opened in January 1959 at the Antoine Theatre in Paris and was a critical success.

During these years, he published posthumously the works of the philosopher Simone Weil, in the series "Espoir" ('Hope') which he had founded for Éditions Gallimard. Weil had great influence on his philosophy, since he saw her writings as an "antidote" to nihilism. Camus described her as "the only great spirit of our times".

Death

Camus died on 4 January 1960 at the age of 46, in a car accident near Sens, in Le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin. He had spent the New Year's holiday of 1960 at his house in Lourmarin, Vaucluse with his family, and his publisher Michel Gallimard of Éditions Gallimard, along with Gallimard's wife, Janine, and daughter. Camus's wife and children went back to Paris by train on 2 January, but Camus decided to return in Gallimard's luxurious Facel Vega FV2. The car crashed into a plane tree on a long straight stretch of the Route nationale 5 (now the RN 6 or D606). Camus, who was in the passenger seat, died instantly. Gallimard died five days later, although his wife and daughter were unharmed.

144 pages of a handwritten manuscript entitled Le premier Homme ('The First Man') were found in the wreckage. Camus had predicted that this unfinished novel based on his childhood in Algeria would be his finest work. Camus was buried in the Lourmarin Cemetery, Vaucluse, France, where he had lived. Jean-Paul Sartre read a eulogy, paying tribute to Camus's heroic "stubborn humanism". William Faulkner wrote his obituary, saying, "When the door shut for him he had already written on this side of it that which every artist who also carries through life with him that one same foreknowledge and hatred of death is hoping to do: I was here."

Literary career

Camus's first publication was a play called Révolte dans les Asturies (Revolt in the Asturias) written with three friends in May 1936. The subject was the 1934 revolt by Spanish miners that was brutally suppressed by the Spanish government, resulting in 1,500 to 2,000 deaths. In May 1937 he wrote his first book, L'Envers et l'Endroit (Betwixt and Between, also translated as The Wrong Side and the Right Side). Both were published by Edmond Charlot's small publishing house. Camus separated his work into three cycles. Each cycle consisted of a novel, an essay, and a play. The first was the cycle of the absurd consisting of L'Étranger, Le Mythe de Sysiphe, and Caligula. The second was the cycle of the revolt which included La Peste (The Plague), L'Homme révolté (The Rebel), and Les Justes (The Just Assassins). The third, the cycle of the love, consisted of Nemesis. Each cycle was an examination of a theme with the use of a pagan myth and including biblical motifs.

The books in the first cycle were published between 1942 and 1944, but the theme was conceived earlier, at least as far back as 1936. With this cycle, Camus aimed to pose a question on the human condition, discuss the world as an absurd place, and warn humanity of the consequences of totalitarianism.

Camus began his work on the second cycle while he was in Algeria, in the last months of 1942, just as the Germans were reaching North Africa. In the second cycle, Camus used Prometheus, who is depicted as a revolutionary humanist, to highlight the nuances between revolution and rebellion. He analyses various aspects of rebellion, its metaphysics, its connection to politics, and examines it under the lens of modernity, historicity, and the absence of a God.

After receiving the Nobel Prize, Camus gathered, clarified, and published his pacifist leaning views at Actuelles III: Chronique algérienne 1939–1958 (Algerian Chronicles). He then decided to distance himself from the Algerian War as he found the mental burden too heavy. He turned to theatre and the third cycle which was about love and the goddess Nemesis, the Greek and Roman goddess of Revenge.

Two of Camus's works were published posthumously. The first entitled La mort heureuse (A Happy Death) (1971) is a novel that was written between 1936 and 1938. It features a character named Patrice Mersault, comparable to The Stranger's Meursault. There is scholarly debate about the relationship between the two books. The second was an unfinished novel, Le Premier homme (The First Man, published in 1994), which Camus was writing before he died. It was an autobiographical work about his childhood in Algeria and its publication in 1994 sparked a widespread reconsideration of Camus's allegedly unrepentant colonialism.

Political stance
Camus was a moralist; he claimed morality should guide politics. While he did not deny that morals change over time, he rejected the classical Marxist view that historical material relations define morality.

Camus was also strongly critical of Marxism–Leninism, especially in the case of the Soviet Union, which he considered totalitarian. Camus rebuked those sympathetic to the Soviet model and their "decision to call total servitude freedom". A proponent of libertarian socialism, he stated that the Soviet Union was not socialist and the United States was not liberal. His critique of the Soviet Union caused him to clash with others on the political left, most notably with his on-again/off-again friend Jean-Paul Sartre.

Active in the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, Camus wrote for and edited the Resistance journal Combat. Of the French collaboration with the German occupiers, he wrote: "Now the only moral value is courage, which is useful here for judging the puppets and chatterboxes who pretend to speak in the name of the people." After France's liberation, Camus remarked: "This country does not need a Talleyrand, but a Saint-Just." The reality of the postwar tribunals soon changed his mind: Camus publicly reversed himself and became a lifelong opponent of capital punishment.

Camus had anarchist sympathies, which intensified in the 1950s, when he came to believe that the Soviet model was morally bankrupt. Camus was firmly against any kind of exploitation, authority, property, the State, and centralization. However, he opposed revolution, separating the rebel from the revolutionary and believing that the belief in "absolute truth", most often assuming the guise of history or reason, inspires the revolutionary and leads to tragic results. He believed that rebellion is spurred by our outrage over the world's lack of transcendent significance, while political rebellion is our response to attacks against the dignity and autonomy of the individual. Camus opposed political violence, tolerating it only in rare and very narrowly defined instances, as well as revolutionary terror which he accused of sacrificing innocent lives on the altar of history.

Philosophy professor David Sherman considers Camus an anarcho-syndicalist. Graeme Nicholson considers Camus an existentialist anarchist.

The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting of the Cercle des Étudiants Anarchistes ('Anarchist Student Circle') in 1948 as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist thought. Camus wrote for anarchist publications such as Le Libertaire ('The Libertarian'), La Révolution prolétarienne ('The Proletarian Revolution'), and Solidaridad Obrera ('Workers' Solidarity'), the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT, 'National Confederation of Labor').

Camus kept a neutral stance during the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962). While he was against the violence of the National Liberation Front (FLN), he acknowledged the injustice and brutalities imposed by colonialist France. He was supportive of Pierre Mendès France's Unified Socialist Party (PSU) and its approach to the crisis; Mendès France advocated for reconciliation. Camus also supported a like-minded Algerian militant, Aziz Kessous. Camus traveled to Algeria to negotiate a truce between the two belligerents but was met with distrust by all parties. In one, often misquoted incident, Camus confronted an Algerian critic during his 1957 Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, rejecting the false equivalence of justice with revolutionary terrorism: "People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of those tramways. If that is justice, then I prefer my mother." Critics have labelled the response as reactionary and a result of a colonialist attitude.

Camus was sharply critical of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the 1950s, Camus devoted his efforts to human rights. In 1952, he resigned from his work for UNESCO when the UN accepted Spain, under the leadership of the caudillo General Francisco Franco, as a member. Camus maintained his pacifism and resisted capital punishment anywhere in the world. He wrote an essay against capital punishment in collaboration with Arthur Koestler, the writer, intellectual, and founder of the League Against Capital Punishment entitled Réflexions sur la peine capitale ('Reflections on Capital Punishment'), published by Calmann-Levy in 1957.

Along with Albert Einstein, Camus was one of the sponsors of the Peoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly (PWCA), which took place between 1950 and 1951 at Palais Electoral in Geneva, Switzerland.

Role in Algeria

Born in Algeria to French parents, Camus was familiar with the institutional racism of France against Arabs and Berbers, but he was not part of a rich elite. He lived in very poor conditions as a child, but was a citizen of France and as such was entitled to citizens' rights; members of the country's Arab and Berber majority were not.

Camus was a vocal advocate of the "new Mediterranean Culture". This was his vision of embracing the multi-ethnicity of the Algerian people, in opposition to "Latiny", a popular pro-fascist and antisemitic ideology among other pieds-noirs – French or Europeans born in Algeria. For Camus, this vision encapsulated the Hellenic humanism which survived among ordinary people around the Mediterranean Sea. His 1938 address on "The New Mediterranean Culture" represents Camus's most systematic statement of his views at this time. Camus also supported the Blum–Viollette proposal to grant Algerians full French citizenship in a manifesto with arguments defending this assimilative proposal on radical egalitarian grounds. In 1939, Camus wrote a stinging series of articles for the Alger républicain on the atrocious living conditions of the inhabitants of the Kabylie highlands. He advocated for economic, educational, and political reforms as a matter of emergency.

In 1945, following the Sétif and Guelma massacre after Arabs revolted against French mistreatment, Camus was one of only a few mainland journalists to visit the colony. He wrote a series of articles reporting on conditions and advocating for French reforms and concessions to the demands of the Algerian people.

When the Algerian War began in 1954, Camus was confronted with a moral dilemma. He identified with the pieds-noirs such as his own parents and defended the French government's actions against the revolt. He argued the Algerian uprising was an integral part of the "new Arab imperialism" led by Egypt and an "anti-Western" offensive orchestrated by Russia to "encircle Europe" and "isolate the United States". Although favoring greater Algerian autonomy or even federation, though not full-scale independence, he believed the pieds-noirs and Arabs could co-exist. During the war, he advocated a civil truce that would spare the civilians. It was rejected by both sides who regarded it as foolish. Behind the scenes, he began working for imprisoned Algerians who faced the death penalty. His position drew much criticism from the left and later postcolonial literary critics, such as Edward Said, who were opposed to European imperialism, and charged that Camus's novels and short stories are plagued with colonial depictions – or conscious erasures – of Algeria's Arab population. In their eyes, Camus was no longer the defender of the oppressed.

Camus once said that the troubles in Algeria "affected him as others feel pain in their lungs".

Existentialism
Even though Camus is mostly connected to absurdism, he is routinely categorized as an existentialist, a term he rejected on several occasions.

Camus himself said his philosophical origins lay in ancient Greek philosophy, Nietzsche, and 17th-century moralists, whereas existentialism arose from 19th- and early 20th-century philosophy such as Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger. He also said his work, The Myth of Sisyphus, was a criticism of various aspects of existentialism. Camus rejected existentialism as a philosophy, but his critique was mostly focused on Sartrean existentialism and – though to a lesser extent – on religious existentialism. He thought that the importance of history held by Marx and Sartre was incompatible with his belief in human freedom. David Sherman and others also suggest the rivalry between Sartre and Camus also played a part in his rejection of existentialism. David Simpson argues further that his humanism and belief in human nature set him apart from the existentialist doctrine that existence precedes essence.

On the other hand, Camus focused most of his philosophy around existential questions. The absurdity of life and that it inevitably ends in death is highlighted in his acts. His belief was that the absurd – life being void of meaning, or man's inability to know that meaning if it were to exist – was something that man should embrace. His opposition to Christianity and his commitment to individual moral freedom and responsibility are only a few of the similarities with other existential writers. Camus addressed one of the fundamental questions of existentialism: the problem of suicide. He wrote: "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide." Camus viewed the question of suicide as arising naturally as a solution to the absurdity of life.

Absurdism
Many existentialist writers have addressed the Absurd, each with their own interpretation of what it is and what makes it important. Kierkegaard suggests that the absurdity of religious truths prevents people from reaching God rationally. Sartre recognizes the absurdity of individual experience. Camus's thoughts on the Absurd begin with his first cycle of books and the literary essay The Myth of Sisyphus, his major work on the subject. In 1942, he published the story of a man living an absurd life in The Stranger. He also wrote a play about the Roman emperor Caligula, pursuing an absurd logic, which was not performed until 1945. His early thoughts appeared in his first collection of essays, Betwixt and Between, in 1937. Absurd themes were expressed with more sophistication in his second collection of essays, Noces (Nuptials) in 1938. In these essays, Camus reflects on the experience of the Absurd. Aspects of the notion of the Absurd can also be found in The Plague.

Camus follows Sartre's definition of the Absurd: "That which is meaningless. Thus man's existence is absurd because his contingency finds no external justification". The Absurd is created because man, who is placed in an unintelligent universe, realises that human values are not founded on a solid external component; as Camus himself explains, the Absurd is the result of the "confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world". Even though absurdity is inescapable, Camus does not drift towards nihilism. But the realization of absurdity leads to the question: Why should someone continue to live? Suicide is an option that Camus firmly dismisses as the renunciation of human values and freedom. Rather, he proposes we accept that absurdity is a part of our lives and live with it.

The turning point in Camus's attitude to the Absurd occurs in a collection of four letters to an anonymous German friend, written between July 1943 and July 1944. The first was published in the Revue Libre in 1943, the second in the Cahiers de Libération in 1944, and the third in the newspaper Libertés, in 1945. The four letters were published as Lettres à un ami allemand ('Letters to a German Friend') in 1945, and were included in the collection Resistance, Rebellion, and Death.

Camus regretted the continued reference to himself as a "philosopher of the absurd". He showed less interest in the Absurd shortly after publishing The Myth of Sisyphus. To distinguish his ideas, scholars sometimes refer to the Paradox of the Absurd, when referring to "Camus's Absurd".

Revolt
Camus articulated the case for revolting against any kind of oppression, injustice, or whatever disrespects the human condition. He is cautious enough, however, to set the limits on the rebellion. The Rebel explains in detail his thoughts on the issue. There, he builds upon the absurd, described in The Myth of Sisyphus, but goes further. In the introduction, where he examines the metaphysics of rebellion, he concludes with the phrase "I revolt, therefore we exist" implying the recognition of a common human condition. Camus also delineates the difference between revolution and rebellion and notices that history has shown that the rebel's revolution might easily end up as an oppressive regime; he therefore places importance on the morals accompanying the revolution. Camus poses a crucial question: Is it possible for humans to act in an ethical and meaningful manner in a silent universe? According to him, the answer is yes, as the experience and awareness of the Absurd creates the moral values and also sets the limits of our actions. Camus separates the modern form of rebellion into two modes. First, there is the metaphysical rebellion, which is "the movement by which man protests against his condition and against the whole of creation". The other mode, historical rebellion, is the attempt to materialize the abstract spirit of metaphysical rebellion and change the world. In this attempt, the rebel must balance between the evil of the world and the intrinsic evil which every revolt carries, and not cause any unjustifiable suffering.

Legacy
Camus's novels and philosophical essays are still influential. After his death, interest in Camus followed the rise – and diminution – of the New Left. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, interest in his alternative road to communism resurfaced. He is remembered for his skeptical humanism and his support for political tolerance, dialogue, and civil rights.

Although Camus has been linked to anti-Soviet communism, reaching as far as anarcho-syndicalism, some neoliberals have tried to associate him with their policies; for instance, the French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested that his remains be moved to the Panthéon, an idea that was criticised by Camus's surviving family and angered many on the Left.

American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold stated that their album Life Is But a Dream... was inspired by the work of Camus.

Albert Camus also served as the inspiration for the Aquarius Gold Saint Camus in the classic anime and manga Saint Seiya.

Tributes
In Tipasa, Algeria, inside the Roman ruins, facing the sea and Mount Chenoua, a stele was erected in 1961 in honor of Albert Camus with this phrase in French extracted from his work Noces à Tipasa: "I understand here what is called glory: the right to love beyond measure" (Je comprends ici ce qu'on appelle gloire : le droit d'aimer sans mesure).

The French Post published a stamp with his likeness on 26 June 1967.

Works
The works of Albert Camus include:

Novels

 * A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse; written 1936–38, published 1971)
 * The Stranger (L'Étranger, often translated as The Outsider, though an alternate meaning of l'étranger is 'foreigner'; 1942)
 * The Plague (La Peste, 1947)
 * The Fall (La Chute, 1956)
 * The First Man (Le premier homme; incomplete, published 1994)

Short stories

 * Exile and the Kingdom (L'exil et le royaume; collection, 1957), containing the following short stories:
 * "The Adulterous Woman" (La Femme adultère)
 * "The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" (Le Renégat ou un esprit confus)
 * "The Silent Men" (Les Muets)
 * "The Guest" (L'Hôte)
 * "Jonas, or the Artist at Work" (Jonas, ou l'artiste au travail)
 * "The Growing Stone" (La Pierre qui pousse)

Academic theses

 * Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism (Métaphysique chrétienne et néoplatonisme; 1935): the thesis that enabled Camus to teach in secondary schools in France

Non-fiction

 * Betwixt and Between (L'envers et l'endroit, also translated as The Wrong Side and the Right Side; collection, 1937)
 * Nuptials (Noces, 1938)
 * The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 1942)
 * The Rebel (L'Homme révolté, 1951)
 * Algerian Chronicles (Chroniques algériennes; 1958, first English translation published 2013)
 * Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (collection, 1961)
 * Notebooks 1935–1942 (Carnets, mai 1935 — fevrier 1942, 1962)
 * Notebooks 1942–1951 (Carnets II: janvier 1942-mars 1951, 1965)
 * Lyrical and Critical Essays (collection, 1968)
 * American Journals (Journaux de voyage, 1978)
 * Notebooks 1951–1959 (2008). Published as Carnets Tome III: Mars 1951 – December 1959 (1989)
 * Correspondence (1944–1959) The correspondence of Albert Camus and María Casares, with a preface by his daughter, Catherine (2017)

Plays

 * Caligula (written 1938, performed 1945)
 * The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu, 1944)
 * The State of Siege (L'État de Siège, 1948)
 * The Just Assassins (Les Justes, 1949)
 * Requiem for a Nun (Requiem pour une nonne, adapted from William Faulkner's novel by the same name; 1956)
 * The Possessed (Les Possédés, adapted from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Demons; 1959)

Essays

 * The Crisis of Man (Lecture at Columbia University, 28 March 1946)
 * Neither Victims nor Executioners (series of essays in Combat, 1946)
 * Why Spain? (essay for the theatrical play L'Etat de Siège, 1948)
 * Summer (L'Été, 1954)
 * Reflections on the Guillotine (Réflexions sur la guillotine; extended essay, 1957)
 * Create Dangerously (Essay on Realism and Artistic Creation; lecture at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, 1957)

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title: Albert Camus