Courmayeur · Italy
The waters of Courmayeur
Before people came for the mountains, they came for the water. Mineral springs rise on these slopes which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries enjoyed a serious medical reputation, and Courmayeur was a spa town long before it was a climbing town. Visitors arrived by carriage, stayed for weeks, drank the water at fixed hours and walked about. The mountains were the backdrop, not the reason: disagreeable, dangerous, to be observed at a distance. Then within a generation the relationship reversed and people began paying to go up them. The springs are still here, and water from this valley is drunk across half of Italy, but almost nobody comes to Courmayeur to drink any longer.
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What was it supposed to cure?
Digestive, liver and circulatory complaints, according to the descriptions of the time. A spa cure was a mixture of chemistry, rest and clean air, and the part that actually worked was probably spending three weeks walking instead of being in a city.
Who were these visitors?
People who could afford to disappear for a month: families from Turin and Milan, a few foreigners, and later the first English visitors, who arrived with other intentions. They built the hotels that went on to house the climbers.
What about the baths at Pré-Saint-Didier?
They are a few kilometres down the valley and have a parallel history: there the water is hot and one bathes in it, here it is cold and one drinks it. Between them they made this end of the valley a destination a century before the cable cars.
Where it is
More stories in Courmayeur
- The Aiguille Blanche
- The Aiguille Noire
- Duke of the Abruzzi Alpine Museum
- The Brenva Spur
- The Guides' House
- Church of Saint Pantaléon
- The quiet col
- The Col de la Seigne