Archive · Chronicle · Memory Anteprima Turin, Italia
TORINOMIA
en

Val di Susa

Alpine valley of the Dora Riparia between Turin and France: route of the Mont Cenis and Montgenèvre passes, of the Fréjus, and of the new Turin-Lyon line.

Image from the TorinoOggi publication
From the publication by TorinoOggi, 2026-09-18

The Val di Susa (or Valle di Susa, Valsusa) is the great valley of the Western Alps followed by the Dora Riparia: it stretches for about seventy kilometres from the Montgenèvre pass down to where it opens onto the plain west of Turin. Since Roman times it has been one of the main gateways between Piedmont and France: it is followed by the Montgenèvre road, the Mont Cenis route and the Fréjus railway, and it is the route chosen for the new Turin-Lyon line.[1] For this reason its history is at once a history of mountain passages, of fortresses, of abbeys, and, over the last thirty years, of a political conflict that has had national resonance.

Geography

The valley's historic centre is Susa, at 503 metres above sea level on both banks of the Dora and the Cenischia stream, 53 kilometres from Turin. It is at Susa that the road forks: one branch climbs to Mont Cenis, 28 kilometres higher up, the other reaches Montgenèvre after 42 kilometres.[2] The lower valley descends toward Avigliana and its lakes; the upper valley, beyond Susa, climbs toward Oulx, Cesana and Bardonecchia and is a land of ski resorts. Part of the territory is protected by the Cottian Alps parks, headquartered at Salbertrand: the Gran Bosco di Salbertrand nature park, the Orsiera-Rocciavrè, the Lakes of Avigliana, and the Foresto and Chianocco gorge reserves.[3]

From Segusio to the medieval age

The ancient Segusio was the capital of the kingdom that took the name of King Cottius, and later a Roman municipium. The best-known mark of that era is the single-bay arch that Cottius had erected in honour of Augustus in 9 BC; Susa also retains the remains of a 2nd-century amphitheatre. In 1046, with the marriage of Adelaide and Otto, Susa entered the domains of the counts of Savoy; in 1173 Frederick Barbarossa put Susa to the torch.[1] Between 1536 and 1559 the town remained under French rule.[2]

Two of Piedmont's oldest monastic centres arose along the valley. The Abbey of Novalesa, at the foot of Mont Cenis, was founded in 726 by the Frank Abbo; Saracen raids emptied it for a century and destroyed its library, and its history is recounted in the Chronicon Novalicense, written in the first half of the 11th century. The monastery's surviving documents are kept in the State Archive of Turin.[4] At the mouth of the valley, on Mount Pirchiriano, the Sacra di San Michele was enlarged between 983 and 987 by Hugh of Montboissier; nearly destroyed by the French in 1629, it became a burial place for members of the House of Savoy and has been entrusted to the Rosminians since 1836.[5]

The upper valley and the Escartons

For centuries the valley had two separate histories. The upper valley, from Cesana to Bardonecchia and beyond, belonged to the Dauphiné: in 1343 the Grande Charte of the Dauphin Humbert II, paid for by the mountain communities with twelve thousand gold florins, created the federation of the Escartons, five cantons with broad fiscal and administrative autonomy, among them that of Oulx. The autonomy lasted until the Treaty of Utrecht, in the early 18th century, when those lands passed to the Savoys. The upper valley's Occitan linguistic identity survived the change of sovereignty and is still cultivated today through festivals and initiatives centred on traditional music.[6]

The Fréjus tunnel

In the 19th century the valley became the route of the first great Alpine tunnel. The project presented to Cavour by Germano Sommeiller together with Severino Grattoni and Sebastiano Grandis was approved by the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia on 29 June 1857, and the works began in October of that same year. The 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana recalled it thus:

«the small Kingdom of Sardinia, alone, began that immense undertaking in October of that same year»

Enciclopedia Italiana, entry «Fréjus», 1932

Twenty-five years of excavation were expected; fewer than thirteen were enough, thanks to favourable ground conditions and to the drilling machines invented by Sommeiller himself. The tunnel, 12,819 metres long between its portals, joined Bardonecchia to Modane, on the French side; the line was inaugurated in 1871.[7]

The 2006 Olympics

With the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics the upper valley hosted some of the events: at Cesana Torinese the Pariol bobsled track was built, costing 110 million euros and idle since 2011; at Sauze d'Oulx alpine skiing events were held, and the freestyle stadium has been replaced by a sports centre; at Bardonecchia the Olympic village has become a hotel. Daniele Donati, general director of Parcolimpico, explained to Il Post: «The main issue is that all these facilities, and the hotels too, were designed to last two weeks; they were meant to switch on fully and then switch off fully».[8]

The Turin-Lyon line and the No TAV movement

The valley is crossed by the cross-border section of the new Turin-Lyon railway line, 270 kilometres in all, whose heart is the Mont Cenis base tunnel: two bores of 57.5 kilometres each, destined to form the longest railway tunnel in the world. At Chiomonte the public promoter TELT has opened a visitor centre dedicated to Mario Virano.[9] By September 2026, 49.5 of the planned 164 kilometres of tunnels had been excavated.[10]

Opposition to the project gave rise to the No TAV Movement. The first demonstration dates back to 2 March 1995; in 2005, at Venaus, valley residents reoccupied the construction site that the police had opened overnight. In 2012 an article by Marco Imarisio in the Corriere della Sera, picked up by Il Post, described a movement made up of valley inhabitants, autonomists from Turin's social centres such as Askatasuna, and anarchist groups.[11] The protests have continued: on 26 July 2025, after a march that set out from Venaus, several hundred protesters occupied a stretch of the A32 motorway and attacked the fences of the Chiomonte, San Didero and Traduerivi construction sites.[12]

A frontier of today

The Montgenèvre route, from Claviere toward Briançon over two thousand metres up, is also one of the routes taken by migrants trying to reach France from Italy. At Oulx, since 2018, the Catholic foundation Talità Kum has run the Fraternità Massi shelter, supported by associations such as Rainbow for Africa and the Waldensian diaconia; in the first half of 2026, 4,279 people arrived there, while French police turned back 1,373. In the summer of 2026 the facility announced it would close for lack of funds, and Federica Tarenghi of Rainbow for Africa warned: «From 1 September everything becomes much more critical, because people will have nowhere to sleep».[13]

Pages that link here

Timeline

  • — The carabinieri of Turin's investigative unit arrest at dawn a 59-year-old man in lower Val di Susa, at the end of the investigations of Operation «Asmodeo», on charges of enslavement, domestic abuse, aggravated sexual violence and aggravated fraud against the state, linked to yoga, meditation and self-defence classes that he allegedly used to approach vulnerable people. → TorinoOggi Quotidiano Piemontese

Related articles: Askatasuna, Bardonecchia, No TAV Movement, Operation "Asmodeo": arrest in Val di Susa over yoga classes used as a lure (October 2026), Susa, Turin-Lyon

Sources

  1. Treccani
  2. Treccani - Enciclopedia Italiana
  3. Ente di gestione delle aree protette delle Alpi Cozie
  4. Treccani
  5. Treccani
  6. La Gendanews — 17 May 2026
  7. Treccani - Enciclopedia Italiana
  8. Il Post — 28 March 2024
  9. TELT
  10. TELT
  11. Il Post — 3 March 2012
  12. Il Post — 26 July 2025
  13. Il Post — 24 August 2026
  14. TorinoOggi — 1 October 2026
  15. Quotidiano Piemontese — 1 October 2026
  16. la Repubblica Torino — 1 October 2026

Report a mistake.