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Bardonecchia

Municipality in the upper Susa Valley at 1,312 metres, born as a station of the Fréjus rail tunnel and among the birthplaces of skiing in Italy.

Image from the publication of L'Agenda News
From the publication of L'Agenda News

Bardonecchia is a municipality in the upper Susa Valley, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, set at 1,312 metres of elevation in a broad basin where the valleys descending from the French border converge[1]. The municipal territory covers about 132 square kilometres and had 3,063 inhabitants in 2007; the valley of the same name is a short furrow, some fifteen kilometres narrow between the cliff of Punta Clotesse and the flanks of Mount Vin Vert and Mount Jafferau[2]. For those leaving from Turin it is the mountain reachable by train: its modern history begins with the Fréjus rail tunnel and continues with skiing, which arrived here among the first places in Italy.

The town before the tunnel

The old village was dominated by the castle of the counts of Bardonecchia; the parish church of Santi Ippolito e Giorgio preserves a fifteenth-century baptismal font[1]. The present-day municipality is the result of a twentieth-century merger: to the 1,798 inhabitants counted in 1921 were added those of Millaures, Melezet and Rochemolles, bringing the total to 3,229 residents[1]. Local memory is at the centre of a series titled with an expression from the local dialect, "Dran k'la sie tro tar", "before it's too late": at the opening meeting, in April 2025, Walter Re retraced, with period documents and photographs, the life of the town from the eighteenth century up to the rail tunnel[3].

The Fréjus, from Medail's project to 1871

The idea of passing beneath the Alps from Bardonecchia was that of a native son of the town, Giuseppe Medail, who studied the route in 1832; the project was later reworked by the Belgian engineer Henri Maus and the geologist Angelo Sismonda[4]. The breakthrough came with Germano Sommeiller, inventor of a mechanical drill powered by compressed air, who together with Severino Grattoni and Sebastiano Grandis presented a complete project to Cavour. The law for the tunnel was approved by the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia on 29 June 1857 and excavation began in October of that same year[4]. The two galleries met on 25 December 1870 and in 1871 the line entered service, after less than thirteen years of work instead of the twenty-five planned; of the initial 12,819 metres, 6,790 lie on Italian territory[4]. A monument to Medail, from 1881, commemorates the originator of the project in the town[1].

The construction site changed the face of the village. The lodgings of the roughly two thousand miners engaged in the excavation were converted into the first hotels, and alongside them small villas sprang up where well-off families spent three months each summer[5]. On the electrically powered Turin-Modane line, the town hosted an important railway power station, and in 1930 the Enciclopedia Italiana described it thus[1]:

"the most important summer holiday resort and winter sports centre of the entire Susa Valley"

Enciclopedia Italiana, entry "Bardonecchia", 1930

The cradle of Italian skiing

In 1901 Adolfo Kind and other pioneers climbed the slopes of Monte Tabor on skis, and from being a summer destination the town became a laboratory of ski mountaineering[6]. Skiing was then a pastime "for engineers," practised with equipment imported from Northern Europe and presented as "snow skates, for gliding and jumping"[5]. In 1908 the Sci Club Bardonecchia was founded: its first president was Emilio Armando, its first secretary Domenico Ancellotti[7]. In the autumn of that same year the Ski Club Torino and the 3rd Alpini Regiment completed a fifty-metre ski jump on the slopes of Colomion, and in the winter of 1908-1909 the club organised the first Italian ski championships[7].

On that jump the Norwegian Harald Smith, already a medallist at Holmenkollen in 1904, set a world jumping record: 43 metres according to some accounts, 44 according to others[8][7]. The meadow at the foot of the slope still bears his name, Campo Smith[8].

Chairlifts and facilities

In 1935 the Colomion sled-lift came into operation, a large sledge that towed skiers uphill[8]. In 1946 Bardonecchia inaugurated the first single-seat chairlift in Italy, from Grange Hyppolites to Punta Colomion[6]. The years of expansion followed: in 1958 the Jafferau sector was created, in 1965 the lifts reached Melezet, and in the 1960s people even skied in summer on the Sommeiller glacier[6]. In 2021 the ski area had about a hundred kilometres of slopes, 21 lifts and a capacity of 30,000 people per hour[8].

A border valley

The border position has left military works behind. After the opening of the Fréjus tunnel, the Bardonecchia basin became a strategic point, defended with a new permanent fortification, Fort Bramafam, which combined stone and earthworks with concrete and steel domes[9]. Restored by the Associazione per gli Studi di Storia e Architettura militare (ASSAM) through the work of volunteers, it is today a museum with 39 rooms, 160 uniformed mannequins and 80 pieces of artillery[10]. The mountain has also taken its toll: in the winter of 1931 an avalanche swept away twenty-one men of the "Fenestrelle" Alpini battalion at Picreaux—three officers, two non-commissioned officers and sixteen Alpini; every July the local Alpini group commemorates them with a ceremony[11].

From the Olympics to today

Bardonecchia was one of the mountain municipalities of the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, together with Sestriere, Claviere, Sauze d'Oulx and the other centres of the valleys[12]. Here the snowboard half-pipe events were held and one of the three Olympic villages was built, later converted into a hotel; the Games brought new ski lifts[13]. Skiing remains at the centre of the town's life: in March 2026 the FISI 50 slope at Colomion hosted the junior World Championships and a stage of the Telemark World Cup, with the award ceremonies at Campo Smith[14]. Mountaineering memory also finds its place: in July 2026 Melezet commemorated the 1956 ski-mountaineering traverse made by four ski mountaineers, Bonatti, Longo, Guy and Dematteis[15].

Timeline

  • — The State Police arrest a twenty-four-year-old in Bardonecchia found with half a kilo of marijuana hidden in a car parked with the engine running. → TorinoOggi ANSA Piemonte

Related articles: Inalpi Arena, Lingotto, Olimpiadi invernali di Torino 2006, Sauze d'Oulx, Sestriere, Val di Susa

Pages linking here

Sources

  1. Treccani – Enciclopedia Italiana (1930) — 1 January 1930
  2. Treccani
  3. L'Agenda News
  4. Treccani – Enciclopedia Italiana
  5. L'Agenda News — 9 August 2022
  6. L'Agenda News — 25 December 2025
  7. L'Agenda News — 6 December 2018
  8. L'Agenda News — 3 January 2021
  9. Piemonte Italia – Regione Piemonte
  10. Forte Bramafam – ASSAM
  11. L'Agenda News — 26 July 2025
  12. Treccani – Enciclopedia dello Sport
  13. Il Post — 28 March 2024
  14. L'Agenda News — 5 March 2026
  15. L'Agenda News — 6 July 2026

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