Aosta Culture

The Aosta Valley is the smallest region in Italy and the most linguistically complicated, and Aosta is where all of it meets.

Three languages

Italian and French are both official. The everyday vernacular of the valley is patois valdotain, a Franco-Provencal language that is neither, still spoken across the villages and taught in schools. In the Lys valley to the east, the Walser communities of Gressoney and Issime speak an archaic German brought over the passes in the thirteenth century.

The Fiera di Sant'Orso

On 30 and 31 January the streets fill with more than a thousand craftspeople showing carved wood, soapstone, wrought iron and drap, the valley's heavy woollen cloth. It is documented for a thousand years, it runs in deep winter, and it is the region's single biggest occasion.

Fontina

The valley's cheese is made from the milk of one breed, in one region, and matured in old mine tunnels and cellars; it is the base of the local fondue and of most of what is eaten here in winter.

Mountain seriousness

This is a region of guides, rescuers and people who work above two thousand metres, and the attitude to the mountains is practical rather than romantic.

Castles as a habit

The valley holds more than seventy castles and towers, most of them built by families holding a stretch of the road and charging for it. Several are open, several are ruins on crags, and they are the visible form of how this valley was governed.

Wine

Tiny quantities, very high vineyards, and grapes — Petite Arvine, Fumin, Prie Blanc — that are grown almost nowhere else.