HP metamorphic belt of the western Alps

The understanding of the subduction-related processes benefited by the studies of the high-pressure (HP) meta-morphic rocks from the western Alps. The most stimu-lating information was obtained from the inner part of the western Alpine belt, where most tectonic units show an early Alpine eclogite-facies recrystallisation. This is especially true for the Austroalpine Sesia Zone and the Penninic Dora-Maira massif. From the Sesia zone,which consists of a wide spectrum of continental crust lithologies recrystallised to quartz-eclogite-facies min-eral assemblages, the first finding of a jadeite-bearingmeta-granitoid has been described, supporting evidencethat even continental crust may subduct into the mantle.From the Dora-Maira massif the first occurrence of regional metamorphic coesite has been reported, open-ing the new fertile field of the ultrahigh-pressure meta-morphism (UHPM), which is now becoming the rule in the collisional orogenic belts.