Which country do the Alps NOT touch?

Spain. The Alps run through eight countries - France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Liechtenstein and Monaco - and Spain's mountains are the Pyrenees, a separate range along the French border, and the Cantabrians and Sierra Nevada further in.

The Alps exist because Africa is pushing into Europe. The plate collision closed an ocean called the Tethys and crumpled its floor upward, which is why marine limestone full of fossil sea creatures sits on Alpine summits, and why the range is still rising by a millimetre or two a year - roughly balanced by erosion.

They shaped European history as a filter rather than a wall. A handful of passes carried nearly all traffic, so whoever held them controlled trade between north and south, and every army from Hannibal's onward had to solve them. Otzi, the 5,300-year-old body found melting out of a glacier in 1991, was crossing at over 3,200 metres - and had an arrowhead in his shoulder, which was noticed only ten years after he was found.