The Walser, an ancient people to discover

A trip to the Aosta Valley is not only an opportunity to immerse yourself in nature but an original way to learn about the traditions, language and customs of an ancient Germanic population, the Walsers.

To find out who they are we need to pick up an ancient text dated 1319 where the origin of their name appears for the first time. Flipping through the pages of the Homines dicti Walser we discover that walser comes from the German Walliser, that is “Valaisan”, that is, the inhabitants of Upper Valais in Switzerland.

This ancient population of Germanic origin, between the 12th and 13th centuries, receives an important assignment from the owners of the Highlands (that is, those mountain regions where man used to live) in which no one has ever succeeded before: the Walsers will have to deal with clearing those areas and making them fertile.

This is how the first groups leave their land of origin and move to colonize the uncultivated lands south of Monte Rosa, in the Graubünden, in the Voralberg, and reach the ends of Haute-Savoie, the Bernese Oberland, Upper Ticino and Tyrol.

One effort after another, the Walsers succeed in the difficult goal of taming the wild and impervious nature of those places and begin to settle there by founding villages that today still catch the eye thanks to their fascinating and unique architectures, as in the Vallone di San Grato, in the Municipality of Issime, where the little church of San Grato – Chröiz stands and where it is possible to admire the typical stadel: old houses where the lower part, made of stone, was used as a cellar and stable with the Wohngade next to it, the living area heated in winter also by the heat of the cattle, while the upper one, made of wood, was used as a granary.