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Claviere

A border town in the upper Susa Valley at the Montgenèvre Pass, split by the frontier in 1947 and today a ski resort of the Via Lattea.

Image from a report by L'Agenda News
From a report by L'Agenda News, 2 September 2026

Claviere is a town in the upper Susa Valley, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, built against the Montgenèvre Pass: the 1,850-metre crossing linking the valleys of the Dora Riparia and the Chisone with the French valley of the Durance, described as the busiest of the western Alpine passes[1]. It has about 210 inhabitants[2], and its history is bound up with that of a border: for more than two centuries the frontier with France ran alongside it, and for twenty years it ran straight through it[3]. Like neighbouring Montgenèvre, it is a mountain and sports resort[1], and its slopes belong to the Via Lattea ski area[4].

The Montgenèvre road

The town traces its own history to that of the pass and its road[5]. Some accounts hold that Hannibal crossed here with his elephants in 218 BC; what is certain is that the pass was used by Julius Caesar, who in 58 BC, appointed proconsul of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, made the journey from Rome to Geneva in eight days and returned several times in the years of his Gallic campaigns, until 51 BC. His ally Cottius had a road built that was better suited to the passage of the legions, the Via Cottia per Alpem, which climbed from Turin through Susa, Oulx and Cesana, and which in the gorges of Claviere was cut into the rock to a width of more than two and a half metres[5].

Throughout the Middle Ages the crossing remained a mule track. The village was the travellers' staging post, and in winter the mountain people marked the route with long poles planted in the snow; in the chapel of San Gervasio an inscription recalled a coachman able to reach the pass with a two-horse carriage without ever leaving his seat[5]. In 1799 Pope Pius VI also stopped to visit the chapel[2]. Even the Napoleonic road, laid out on the slopes of Mount Chaberton, changed little: in the nineteenth century winter remained a season of isolation for the village[2].

A town on the border

After the Treaty of Utrecht, a convention of 4 April 1718 between Louis XV of France and Victor Amadeus II recognised Claviere as belonging to the Savoy sovereign as half of the Montgenèvre plateau, and set the border roughly along the watershed, with a slight advantage to France[3]. The town thus remained on the western edge of the states of the House of Savoy, and later of the Kingdom of Sardinia and of Italy.

The turning point came with the Paris Peace Treaty of 10 February 1947. Annex II moved the border line inside the built-up area: the text states that the new line "reaches the Rio Secco about 200 metres upstream from the bridge of Claviere"[3]. The houses west of the stream ended up on French territory, and with them all the ski lifts and the golf courses: the town was reduced almost to an enclave[3]. The situation was put right by an exchange of letters between the two governments on 28 September 1967, which returned to Claviere all the dwellings west of the Rio Secco, amounting in all to 0.10 square kilometres of territory[3]. According to the newspaper of the Metropolitan City of Turin, the definitive agreement that made Claviere entirely Italian instead dates from 1975; in its "postcard" from the town, the authority wrote that the village's Italian-French nature had led it, "from Napoleon's time onward, to be the protagonist of divisions that split its heart between France and the bel paese"[2]. The customs post remained in the centre, with its traffic jams, until 23 June 1989, when it was moved to the edge of the built-up area[3].

Above the town looms Mount Chaberton, on whose summit stands what is presented as the highest fort in Europe. Claviere is home to the Mount Chaberton exhibition, curated by Roberto Guasco, who in February 2024 presented in Cesana Torinese a collection of video interviews with residents about the period before, during and after the war[6]. At the end of August 2026 re-enactors from the Italica Virtus group, in the uniform of the Royal Italian Army, camped in tents at Claviere with night-time temperatures down to 3°C, climbed to the Batteria Alta and used the Mount Chaberton exhibition as their base[7].

The snowiest basin

Skiing arrived for military reasons. The new equipment interested the high command, grappling with the defence of 1,900 kilometres of Alpine frontier, and in 1901 the 3rd Alpini Regiment, stationed at Bousson, held a regular training course on the snows of Cesana and Claviere[2]. In 1914 the mayor, E. Santi, drew the conclusions:

"After so many years of skiing life, it has been established that the basin of Claviéres and its surroundings is the snowiest area of our Piedmontese valleys"

E. Santi, mayor of Claviere, 1914

According to the same account the season could begin in October and close in April[5]. The town's economy has since been almost entirely tourist-based: the municipality lists hotels, swimming pools, tennis courts and a nine-hole golf course for summer, chairlifts, a ski lift, a ski jump and a skating rink for winter, as well as cross-country trails towards Montgenèvre, paths around Mount Chaberton, four via ferrata routes and high pastures for livestock farming[8]. Claviere's slopes, in the Montiluna sector, belong to the international ski area shared with Sestriere, Sauze d'Oulx, Sansicario, Cesana, Oulx, Pragelato and Montgenèvre, which counts 70 lifts and more than 400 kilometres of connected runs[4].

The San Gervasio gorge

In the San Gervasio gorge, between Cesana and Claviere, runs a suspended route made up of three cable bridges, 544 metres long in all; the third section lies about 90 metres above the bottom of the ravine, and the crossing takes about an hour and a half, or two and a half hours combined with the via ferrata[9]. The local press has described it as the longest "Tibetan bridge" in the world[9]. Higher up, at about 2,000 metres on the Monti della Luna, lies Lake Gimont, where in the spring of 2026 hundreds of brown trout and numerous frogs were found dead: initial checks ruled out hydrocarbon pollution[10].

Claviere today

The pass has become a frontier again in a new sense. Many migrants set out from Oulx to reach Claviere and from there climb on foot, along paths rising to two thousand metres, over the Montgenèvre Pass as far as Briançon. Since 2015, when France first suspended the Schengen agreements, dozens of people have died in the attempt, many freezing to death after being injured in the woods or losing the path; in the first six months of 2026 French police turned back 1,373 of them[11]. The border at Claviere and Bardonecchia is watched over by the Bardonecchia Border Police Sector, which between June and July 2026 carried out 8,678 checks on people and 1,636 on vehicles, and has launched joint patrols and monthly coordinated operations with the French Police aux Frontières of Modane and Montgenèvre[12]. The town belongs to the Mountain Union of Olympic Municipalities of the Via Lattea[13]; its primary school, like those of Sestriere, remains open by exception despite having fewer pupils than the minimum threshold, a choice made to fight depopulation in the mountains[14].

Chronology

  • — Claviere and Cesana Torinese host the high-altitude rescue exercise «Lago Nero 2026», involving 145 rescuers from thirteen third-sector organisations in a simulated search scenario between 2,000 and 2,400 metres of altitude. → TorinoOggi ANSA Piemonte

Related articles: Val di Susa

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Sources

  1. Treccani
  2. L'Agenda News — 14 May 2021
  3. Comune di Claviere
  4. Vialattea
  5. Comune di Claviere
  6. L'Agenda News — 9 February 2024
  7. L'Agenda News — 2 September 2026
  8. Comune di Claviere
  9. L'Agenda News — 18 July 2020
  10. L'Agenda News — 29 April 2026
  11. Il Post — 24 August 2026
  12. L'Agenda News — 12 August 2026
  13. Comune di Claviere
  14. L'Agenda News — 28 July 2026

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