Aosta

Introduction

 Fin dalla sua fondazione, nel 25 a.C., la città di Aosta ha sempre costituito il cuore della regione circostante, che successivamente ne ha assunto il nome: Valle d'Aosta. Posta ad un'altitudine di 583 m, conta circa 35.000 abitanti ed è il capoluogo della Regione Autonoma Valle d'Aosta.

Description

From prehistory to the Romans

There is no historically reliable evidence of the existence of a town or village built on the area of what became present-day Aosta from 25 BC onwards. Only the remains of a necropolis and a cult area on the western outskirts (near the church of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans) certify that the area was frequented by primitive peoples: in fact, experts date the finds to the third millennium BC. These are not imposing megalithic monuments: apart from several stone stelae engraved with anthropomorphic subjects, the excavated area has brought to light testimonies that only the guidance of an expert allows anyone to appreciate. However, the parallels drawn between the various European cultures of the time and the one present in the centre of the Valle d'Aosta are very interesting. The latter in fact has no affinities with its closest neighbours in the Po Valley, while it reveals similarities with populations settled in Switzerland and South Tyrol: it is even hypothesised that the same hand that sculpted the Saint-Martin stelae also produced those found in Switzerland near Sion. Speaking of events that took place some five thousand years ago, we can only marvel at the "mobility" of the culture of the time.
We certainly know that just before the arrival of the Romans, a population called the Salassi lived in the Aosta Valley. The origin of this people is uncertain and two schools of thought have tried to ascribe them either to the Ligurian or Celtic stock. Today, the prevailing view seems to be that they were of Celtic stock. This is supported, among other things, by the philological analysis of certain words and place names in the Valle d'Aosta dialect, which are very similar to ancient Celtic, and by the observation of certain collective behaviour, at least according to the very brief description given to us by Roman historians.

There is no basis for this assertion. There is certainly no foundation to the legend according to which the Salassi had founded a city called Cordelia, named after their mythical progenitor. In fact, they seem to have preferred small hill or mid-mountain agglomerations, as evidenced by the route of the road from Saint-Pierre to the Great St. Bernard valley, which is traditionally traced back to the first inhabitants of the valley.

The first collision with the power of the Salassi was the first time that the Salassi had been a city. The first collision with the power of Rome took place after the great Latin power had settled the Carthaginian 'question': the Gauls had been allies of Hannibal and as such constituted a security risk, and the Romans had never forgotten that they had capitulated to this people in the past. The strategy involved the construction of a series of fortified cities, inhabited by the military and their families, a vehicle for spreading the culture of the new rulers: in this way the native peoples who did not want to integrate were forced to take refuge increasingly towards the mountains (abhorred by the Romans), the last example of these, as far as we are concerned, being Eporedia (Ivrea), founded in 100 BC. Furthermore, the problem of safe transit through the two main passes to Savoy and Valais became of such importance that the Emperor Augustus sent his lieutenant Aulus Terentius Varro Murena to 'pacify' the area. The issue was resolved by a heavy armed intervention, which originated from specious reasons and ended with the success of the Roman armies only through deception. Meagre consolation: Varro later paid for his excessive personal ambition by becoming embroiled in an alleged conspiracy that ended with the regular execution of its protagonists, in the best tradition of the political intrigues of the time.
Traditionally, there has always been talk of a veritable genocide suffered by the Salassi, completed by the enslavement of the survivors, their deportation to distant lands, under a twenty-year bond to be respected before their eventual emancipation as freedmen, a measure dictated by the fiercely hostile and indomitable character of the mountaineers. Again, this would be "tendentious" information provided to us by Roman historians after the events, concerned to give an ideological foundation to an essentially unglorious action smelling of auri sacra fames (hunger for gold). Supporting this historiographical hypothesis is some archaeological evidence: stone inscriptions have been found testifying to the presence of families of the Salassa ethnic group in the later Roman city (one of them, dedicated to the emperor Augustus in 23 BC reads: Salassi incolae qui initio se in coloniam contulerunt patrono).

Aosta Roman city

When the war ended and the pax romana was imposed, a new city could be born, right on the route of the legionaries' camp, a place that proved to be strategically successful because it was located in the heart of enemy territory.
Its name, Augusta Praetoria Salassorum, encapsulates all the history that gave rise to it: "Augusta" in honour of the Emperor Augustus, who had in fact wanted it; "Praetoria" because its first inhabitants-colonists were praetorians on leave; "Salassorum", i.e. "of the Salassi" reminds us of who the territory originally belonged to, and perhaps soothed the wounded pride of the losers.
As a matter of fact, Augusta Praetoria (the Salassorum was quickly lost) was founded in 25 BC as a large city for the time: its size suggests that it was sized for thirty to forty thousand inhabitants, of which the actual Romans could only have been a few thousand, and probably more Romans by right rather than by blood.
The archaeological evidence handed down to us is impressive: the bridge over the Buthier stream (which over the centuries has shifted its bed), the triumphal arch dedicated to Augustus, the Praetoria gate, which opened onto the main road axis (Decumanus Maximus), the city walls with some towers that were raised in the Middle Ages, the theatre, the forum, plus an assortment of exhibits in the Regional Archaeological Museum are still in good condition.
The town's fortune is linked to its location at the crossroads of the two main roads crossing the Alps from Columnae Jovis (Little St Bernard) and Mons Jovis (Great St Bernard). As long as the Roman Empire was able to guarantee the security of traffic, Aosta was truly the place where trade flows to and from much of Gaul converged. With the disintegration of political unity first, and of the Latin-style social fabric later, a centuries-long crisis began, reducing the ancient city to a suburb of a few thousand inhabitants, mostly poorly housed in dilapidated hovels leaning against each other and built by plundering the structures of the ancient monuments.

Traces of the era

The Arch of Augustus (1st century BC)
Roman bridge over the Buthier (1st century BC)
The theatre (1st century AD)

The early Middle Ages

The period between the end of the ancient Roman era and the 11th century has left us with little documentary evidence of what was the evolution of the city of Aosta: these are mainly archaeological finds whose serious dumbness must be mediated by the deductions of experts.

Politically, the whole of the Aosta Valley gradually left the Italic influence to come under the barbarian influence first, then Frankish, then Burgundian (until 1032, the date of the death of the last king of Burgundy, Rudolph III). Latin was replaced by Franco-Provençal dialects, similar to those of Savoy and Valais; the church itself, the only institution certainly operating in the territory, abandoned its hierarchical dependence on Vercelli and Milan to become subordinate to the archbishop of Tarantasia (the French region with the capital of Moûtiers).
The few vestiges of life at the time concern the religious buildings. First and foremost, the Cathedral: recent excavations date its original nucleus as far back as the 4th century, when an earlier civil building was remodelled for religious use. However, its imposing structure is much more recent, since it was Bishop Anselm (994-1025) who had a church built with mighty pillars, which were maintained in later reconstructions.
The town's other archaeological site, the basilica of S. Lorenzo in the hamlet of S. Orso, bears witness to the existence of an early Christian church, probably erected in a cemetery area: the tombs of the town's first bishops, including S. Grato, patron saint of the entire diocese, were found here. In front of it, the church of S. Orso with its bell tower and cloister show traces of various reworkings, although the aesthetics left by the late 15th-century restoration prevail: the expert eye, however, will notice the Roman base of the bell tower, the crypt from the "Anselmian" period, the 12th-century cloister with its fine capitals.
Slightly later than the so-called early mediaeval period are other testimonies to the vitality of Aosta at the time: the Romanesque bell tower in today's Via Festaz, where the Benedictines of Fruttuaria erected a convent with an adjoining school in the 11th century, which was the cultural centre of the town for centuries. Today, the structure dedicated to exhibitions called Saint-Bénin is located there, thus keeping the name of the ancient priory.
Also dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries are the nuclei of the current Major Seminary (at Xavier de Maistre Street), then called the priory of Saint-Jacquême, and the women's convent, now Saint-Joseph, located on the site of the Roman amphitheatre, which has never been brought to light.
Lastly, the Franciscan convent, where the town hall now stands, dates back to the 13th century: this was evidently a place predestined for the government of public affairs, since the main institutions of self-government, the States General and their emanation, the Conseil des Commis, used to meet in the great salle of the Conventual fathers (Cordeliers).

Middle Ages and Renaissance

The rebirth of the city is evidenced by the multiplication of documentary sources, which are practically non-existent for the centuries prior to the year 1000. Firstly, the importance assumed by the bishop also in the civil field must be emphasised: it was in fact near the bishopric (adjacent to the cathedral) that the scriptorium was located, where deeds of sale and purchase were formalised, certified by the drawing up of the so-called Charta Augustana, a quite singular phenomenon in the panorama of notarial history and medieval palaeography.

The city's relative political stability favoured a revival of the city. Relative political stability favoured the resumption of trade between the two sides of the Alps and thus the city of Aosta regained its role as a crossroads that it had already assumed in Roman times. Unfortunately, however, the institutional scheme was no longer as clear-cut as it had been under the emperor of Rome: in fact, several local squires shared dominion over a handful of houses and imposed taxes and tolls on wayfarers at their discretion. This situation led to the unable to parseonstruction of a rich endowment of towers, as the most influential families used them as residences (e.g. the Tower of Porta Pretoria, the Tour Fromage, the Tourneuve), while from a purely institutional point of view, one was in fact in a state of semi-anarchy, aggravated by constant neighbourhood fights. The turning point came in 1191, when following the good offices of bishop Valbert and other notables, the young Count of Maurienne (later Savoy) Thomas I undertook to take the city under his jurisdiction, protect its inhabitants and travellers, and above all not to impose taxes without the prior consent of those concerned; at the same time, the people recognised the sovereignty of the count, supporting his finances with a periodical 'donative', and the army by enlisting its citizens. The agreement, called the Charte des franchises (Charter of franchises), is considered by many scholars to be the cornerstone on which the entire history of autonomy and the particularism of Valdostan political institutions was built.
The effects were considerable: the overwhelming power of the local families came to an end and they turned their attention to the rural areas; the figures firstly of the viscount (the 'vice-count' in the person of a member of the house of Challant), then following the abolition of the office, of the bailiff, made their appearance; The artisan sector developed considerably, and was located in the Borgo, the district outside the city walls to the east of the city; a different urban aspect was also emerging, characterised by the partial abandonment of Roman orthogonality; the towers and fortified houses were left behind and the first real palaces were built, such as the presumed house of S. Anselmo and the Lostan palace. Anselm and the Lostan palace (in the street of the same name). The forty-year building site 'sponsored' by Prior Giorgio di Challant, which gave the monumental complex of S. Orso its current layout, is the last chronological evidence (1470-1510) of a golden period for the town, which saw the creation of all the major works of art that can be admired in the Cathedral and its Treasury, to which must be added several precious codices preserved in special archives.

The political crisis of the 16th century and the subsequent decline

Another capital moment in the history of the city of Aosta and the surrounding area is the year 1536. At war against the Hispanic-Hapsburg Empire led by Charles V, the army of Francis I, King of France, invaded Savoy, occupied Chambéry and from there spread into Piedmont. North of the Alps, troops of Bernese Protestants occupied the cantons of Valais and Vaud, also Savoy possessions; the city of Geneva revolted and drove out the ducal representatives and the bishop, embracing the Protestant Reformation and in particular Calvinism. The Duchy of Savoy effectively no longer existed. Only Valle d'Aosta remains unscathed by invasions and uprisings, but it seems to be only a matter of time: in fact, the reformist preachers have begun their work and already the parishes of Torgnon and Antey have been hit by the interdict of the ecclesiastical authority because of their 'sympathy' with the new doctrines. Some nobles and bourgeois of the town were also won over by the Reformation. The time had come, therefore, for the 'choice of camp'.

In a memorable session of the States General, convened on the last day of February 1536, the assembly chooses, apparently unanimously, to remain faithful to the Savoy cause and with it to the Catholic religion; it appoints an executive committee, which it calls the Conseil des Commis; it forms a local militia and mandates a delegation to enter into neutrality and non-belligerence agreements with neighbouring states. Formally, all that is missing is the declaration of independence in order to have a new statelet or canton to federate with its Swiss neighbours.
While the general war did not affect the Aosta Valley thanks to its independent and equidistant policy from the warring nations, in practice it brought its economy to its knees, particularly that of the capital, which had been oriented towards trade and the development of handicrafts. The road to Gaul was progressively abandoned, the villages decayed and the economy turned in on itself. Nor did the restoration of Savoy rule after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) help to improve fortunes. The new duke Emmanuel Philibert at first seemed to reward the loyalty of the people of Valle d'Aosta by authorising a kind of self-government, but in fact he tended to gnaw away at their autonomy and suffocate them with taxes and duties. This is the common thread of the Savoy policy for the following centuries, until their final triumph obtained with the suppression of the now useless Conseil des Commis at the end of the 18th century.
The situation was aggravated by the terrible plague of 1630, which mowed down two thirds of the region's population, and the beginning of the so-called 'little ice age': a significant cooling of the climate with disastrous consequences for harvests and the last cross-border trade. The marginalisation of the region also led to a decrease in the circulation of culture, which in fact became a monopoly of the clergy: they ran the only existing schools, which only from 1655 onwards also catered to an elite female population, thanks to the establishment of the Canonsesses of Lorraine in the city (in the house on the south-east corner of today's Place Chanoux).

There was no shortage of new buildings: the Palais de la Cologne, the Palace of the Canons of Lorraine and the Palace of the Canons of the Canons of Lorraine. There is no shortage of new buildings: the Palais Roncas (stubbornly still used today as a Carabinieri barracks), the Hospice de Charité (now the Regional Library) built thanks to the bequest of Boniface Festaz, the Hôtel des États conceived as the seat of the Conseil des Commis (now adjacent to the town hall); while in the religious sphere, we should mention the church of Santa Croce, that of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans (not the current pagoda-shaped one!), that of the college of Saint-Bénin (now an art exhibition centre), the reconstruction of Saint-Étienne and the bishopric.
According to the 'eye-witness' Jean-Baptiste De Tillier, secretary of the Conseil des Commis for more than forty years and one of the leading Aosta Valley historians of all time, the spectacle offered by the city of Aosta at the beginning of the 18th century is a poor one: most of the houses were built without any urban planning criteria and many were equipped with cattle sheds, with the predictable consequences on their hygiene and that of the various surrounding lanes. Within the walls, more space is occupied by vegetable gardens and orchards than by housing, a sign of a resounding demographic decline compared to antiquity. The main street, then as now the one from the Porta Pretoria to the Cross of the City, often appears deserted, not so much because of the small number of wealthy people living there, but because of a real lack of civilised society. ('La solitude cependant y regne presque toujours, non pas tant par le petit nombre de familles aisées dont elle est habitée, que par le défaut, si on me permet de le dire, de la société civile avec laquelle on y vit'. J.-B. De Tillier, Historique de la Vallée d'Aoste, Aosta 1966, pp.117-118).
In fact, the resident population at the beginning of the 18th century had plummeted to around 2,800; the wealthy families did not exceed fifteen; the number of beggars was considered 'prodigious' even by the elastic standards of the time. The clergy constitutes a massive presence, perhaps because it can offer a minimum of economic security to its members: it occupies about half of the city's territory and its numerical consistency can be estimated at around ten per cent of the inhabitants. We can therefore state that at the end of two hundred negative years on the whole (1550-1750), the city of Aosta has reached its lowest point in prosperity and prestige: having hit rock bottom, all that remains for it to do is to climb back up the slope.

Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

During the 18th century, a slow process of growth, both economic and demographic, began for Aosta: the long period of peace after 1748 (Peace of Aachen) favoured the immigration of farmers and craftsmen. But while the peasants came from the side valleys, the artisans were mostly Piedmontese. They began the process of Italianising a city, which until then had known no other language but French and patois.
The great shake-up of the established order came after the French Revolution: in September 1792, the revolutionary armies invaded Savoy. The Alpine front line crossed the Aosta Valley. Some churches, the College and the Seminary of Aosta were requisitioned to house the troops, while Savoyard exiles, many of them nobles or religious, poured into the city.

The French army entered the valley in 1798. In 1798 the French armies entered Aosta and in January of the following year installed a provisional municipal government there. The influences of Jacobinism were very limited, except for the growing discontent aroused by heavy taxation and the outrageous attitude of the new power towards the centuries-old civil and religious traditions of the local community. The most important consequence of this was the first Révolution des Socques at the beginning of May 1799, so called from the wooden shoes worn by the rebels who left the countryside, especially from Champorcher and Donnas. By the end of the same month, the Austro-Russian troops liquidated the Jacobin municipality, but exactly one year later it was Napoleon's armies that reappeared in the city, and then went on to the victory of Marengo, with the consequent end (for fifteen years) of the Savoy kingdom.
However, Napoleonic power had a considerable influence on the social and urban fabric of the city of Aosta. Firstly, it was administratively united with Ivrea, in a single Département de la Doire, while the bishop's seat was abolished and annexed to that of Biella and Ivrea itself; then the city was subjected to a heavy process of secularisation, including the expulsion of most of the regular religious, the sale of ecclesiastical property and the closure of several churches with the relative stripping of their furnishings. In spite of the post-Napoleonic restoration, most of these measures had definitive consequences.
The expulsion and non-return of the Conventual Franciscan fathers, who had their seat in the heart of the town, effectively freed a vast area, on which the new Town Hall (i.e. the present one) was built between 1836 and 1842, while the demolition of the church of San Francesco gave way to the large square in front of it (for about a century Piazza Carlo Alberto, now Piazza Chanoux). If this realisation was undoubtedly the most 'spectacular', of no less importance were the demolition of numerous gates that barred the central streets, the rectification of some streets and the burying of irrigation and drainage canals.

Aosta tourist centre

An early opportunity for fame, rightly deserved by the capital of Valle d'Aosta, was linked to the richness of its Roman vestiges: the appellation of 'Rome of the Alps' was already circulating in the 16th century, but the region's isolation, due to its difficult communication routes, had not benefited the local economy. The few illustrious visitors, who then gave enthusiastic reports to the public about what they had seen, did not find a following to justify the claim of an early 'birth of tourism'.

It was not until the Romantic culture of the Alps was born that the 'birth of tourism' was established. It was necessary to wait for Romantic culture and its discovery of immaculate landscapes on the one hand, and the rise of mountaineering adventure on the other, to be able to speak of a significant interest in Aosta and its territory.
The 'progressive' circles had already identified the preservation of Roman antiquities and their 'valorisation' as a potential driver for the city's economy. The 1842 town-planning scheme already stated this openly, while a number of religious figures were also committed to this idea, first and foremost the Prior of St. Ursus, Jean-Antoine Gal, founder of the Académie de Saint-Anselme and president of the Comité pour la Conservation des Antiquités du Duché.

The 'exploitation' aspect of the city's antiquities was also a key factor in the city's economy. From the point of view of the 'exploitation' of the mountains as an attraction for outsiders, it was another clergyman who particularly stood out: Canon Georges Carrel. A mountaineer himself, he became a reference point of European importance for the first conquerors of peaks, promoted the construction of refuges, the editing of guidebooks, the assault on the summit of the Matterhorn by his fellow countrymen from Valtournenche, made numerous scientific observations and brought the CAI to Aosta, on 31 August 1868, under the honorary presidency of the Englishman Richard Henry Budden, to whom many merits were acknowledged in the field of promoting tourism on this side of the Alps.

The 'exploitation' of the mountains as a lure for foreigners was another clergyman who stood out in a particular way: Canon Georges Carrel. Between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the motor of the tourist industry was definitively set in motion, underlined by the foundation of the Association pour le mouvement des étrangers, which took place in 1906 in the central café Pollano in Aosta: it was the first association of hoteliers in Valle d'Aosta, which aimed to standardise and raise the quality standards of the service offered, as a guarantee for the client and the good name of the entire community.

The industrial breakthrough

In the period between the two world wars, the city of Aosta underwent a further fundamental development: a gigantic steelworks was built on the southern outskirts in 1916. The work was due to the Ansaldo Company of Genoa, which had acquired the mines of Cogne. Leaving aside corporate events, which were very complex over eighty years, we can safely say that until the 'economic boom' after the Second World War, there was a constant crescendo: first the construction of the Cogne-Acquefredde tunnel to transport ore, then the construction of the railway to Pré-Saint-Didier to transport coal from the La Thuile mines, then the expansion of production, employment and specialisation in the production of special steels. The closure of the mines, the high cost of transporting the raw material and the various cyclical trends of the international markets, have today considerably reduced the size and importance of this industry, which the locals call 'la Cogne', the legacy of its ancient company name (Società Anonima Nazionale Cogne).
But the historical and sociological importance of this industry was enormous, and a mention of the most important issues is indispensable for understanding the current situation in Aosta. The large steelworks totally disrupted the social and urban fabric, causing the resident population to double in the twenty years from 1911 to 1931, and more than triple in 1951; in 1939 it employed almost 3500 workers, directly determining the subsistence of half the population of Aosta, without calculating the ancillary industries. Most of this workforce was originally made up of immigrants from Piedmont and Veneto, while only after the Second World War did the southern 'flow' appear. The result, however, was a strong Italianisation of the city, a fact strongly supported by the fascist regime, which after a tolerant beginning, inaugurated the well-known policy of intolerance towards ethnic and linguistic pluralism. The same historical period saw the beginning of the construction of vast working-class neighbourhoods in the western suburbs, while new public buildings were built within the city walls to cope with an expanding tertiary sector. Romanesque monuments, buildings in the neoclassical style or in the more modern 'fascist style', the new Ospedale Mauriziano, barracks and the Piazza d'Armi (now Piazza della Repubblica) subverted the old town centre, which had grown over the millennia at the bland pace of peasant life.
The post-World War II period also saw the gradual deterioration of the old town centre, abandoned by the old bourgeoisie who lived there, in favour of the surrounding hills or neighbouring towns. It is only in recent decades that the trend has been reversed and many buildings have been given a new lease of life thanks to costly restoration work.
Today, the economic importance of the industrial sector, and of 'Cogne' in particular, is much lower, in contrast to the clearly predominant tertiary sector. Services and commerce are the predominant activities. The importance of mass tourism as a source of wealth is now well known to all, so much so that the need to offer an attractive image of the city has meant that many restoration and conservation works have followed one another without interruption, not without bureaucratic and technical difficulties and agreement between the different needs and expectations of citizens.

The city's economy has been in a state of flux since its foundation.

Since its foundation in 25 B.C., the city of Aosta has always formed the heart of the surrounding region, which later took on the name: Valle d'Aosta.
Situated at an altitude of 583 m, it has some 36,000 inhabitants and is the capital of the Autonomous Region of Valle d'Aosta.

Information

Superficie: 21,39 kmq
Altitudine: 583m
 Maggior elevazione: Punta Chaligne (2607m)
 Numero abitanti: 34619
Nome in dialetto: Veulla
Nome abitanti: aostani
Santo Patrono: San Grato (7 settembre)
Sito internet: www.comune.aosta.it
Webcam:
Comuni confinanti: Charvensod, Gignod, Gressan, Pollein, Roisan, Saint-Christophe, Sarre
 Villaggi e frazioni: Arpuilles, Beauregard, Bibian, Bioulaz, Borgnalle, Brenloz, Busséyaz, Cache, La Combe, Les Capucins, Chabloz, Champailler, Collignon, Cossan, Cotreau, Duvet, Entrebin, Excenex, Les Fourches, Laravoire, Montfleury, Movisod, Pallin, Papet, Pléod, Porossan, La Riondaz, La Rochère, Roppoz, Saraillon, Saumont, Seyssinod, Signayes, Talapé, Tsanté, Tzambarlet, Vignole
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