Cogne historical timeline

Cogne lived on iron for a very long time and on visitors only recently.

The mines

Magnetite was worked here from at least the thirteenth century, under the bishops of Aosta and then under a succession of companies. At their height the mines at Colonna, at 2,400 metres, were among the most important iron sources in Italy, connected to the valley by cableway and later by a mining railway driven through the mountain.

A company village

For much of the twentieth century Cogne was effectively an industrial settlement in an alpine valley, with shift work, company housing and a workforce drawn from outside.

The royal reserve

In 1856 Victor Emmanuel II made these mountains a royal hunting reserve and had the hunting paths built that are now the park's trail network. The protection was for his own sport, but it kept the last ibex in Europe alive.

1922

The reserve was given to the state and became the Gran Paradiso National Park on 3 December 1922, the first in Italy. The ibex population recovered from a few hundred animals to several thousand, and every ibex in the Alps today descends from this one herd.

Closure

The mines closed in 1979. The village lost its industry in a single decision and turned to tourism because there was nothing else.

The railway inside the mountain

To move ore without a cableway, a railway was driven several kilometres through the rock from Cogne to the workings at Colonna in the 1920s. It is the reason visitors can now reach 2,400 metres sitting down.

Since

Cogne has built a careful, small-scale visitor economy and has kept its population, which in an Alpine side valley is an achievement.