For History.com, I wrote about Petrarch’s famous climb:
Looming over the landscape of Provence in southern France, Mont Ventoux rises to a height of 6,270 feet with a windswept, bare-rock limestone summit that shines like snow even in the summer. Today you can drive a car or even race a bicycle to the top if the weather is good, but the peak nicknamed the “Giant of Provence” holds a special place in the history of mountaineering for its association with the Italian poet Petrarch. The poet’s account of ascending it in 1336 has become a touchstone for modern quest for self-discovery and an inspiration to generations of people who head to the mountains for recreation.
In his own time, at the beginning of what would later be labeled the Renaissance, Petrarch was far better known for his sonnets (a form of that poetic style is still named after him) and for his literary elevation of his native Tuscan dialect. In fact, his writings provided one of the templates for the development of modern Italian.