Alagna Valsesia

Alagna sits at the head of the Valsesia, at 1,191 meters, where the valley closes against the south face of Monte Rosa, the second-highest peak in the Alps. The commune covers 72.8 square kilometers, the largest by surface area in the province of Vercelli, and its territory reaches from the valley floor up to the glaciers, which is why a single village can hold both the wooden hamlets of the Walser settlers and the lift stations of a major ski domain.

Those settlers came from the Swiss Valais in the thirteenth century and stayed, building in wood and stone between 1500 and 1700; the hamlets of Pedemonte, Riale and Resiga carry that building tradition still. The Guides Association of Alagna, founded in 1872, is the second-oldest in Italy after Courmayeur, a marker of how early the peaks above the village drew climbers rather than skiers. The lifts came later, opening in stages from the 1950s, and Alagna is now the eastern access to a domain that crosses into the Aosta Valley. Internationally the village is known less for groomed pistes than for the freeride terrain on the massif itself. The Bandiera Arancione of the Touring Club fires here.

The two identities, Walser hamlet and freeride terminus, sit on the same ground because the valley that sheltered thirteenth-century settlers is the same one that funnels skiers up toward the glaciers today.