About Hône

          

Hône


Hône is a village located between the old Roman road called “Galliæ” and the Ayasse River, which comes down from Champorcher Valley.
Even though it is a small village, with a population of only 1200 inhabitants, Hône is plenty of history, tradition and geographical peculiarities. Inside the Old Town, we can admire the typical rural architecture from Aosta Valley: the alternation between wood and stone that creates a remarkable frame of the streets that host the 16th Century parish Church. The village offers abundance of public infrastructures for entertainment and culture, such as parks, skatepark, outdoors rock-climbing structures, the Public Library and lots of natural paths alongside the mountains that surround Hône, from where it is possible to admire the enchanting panorama.
 

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Geography


Hône is located in the entrance of Champorcher Valley, between the left bank of the Ayasse River and the right bank of Dora Baltea River. Its limits draw a square, each side pointing to a natural board, that corresponds exactly to the four cardinal points: Bard on the East, Donnas on the South, Pontboset on the West and Arnad on the North.


The entire territory have been submitted to important geographical events, mainly because of its location in front of “Chiusa di Bard”, the entrance of a tight valley that was originally formed by ice. The land can be subdivided in three categories, as regarding its difference in morphology, altitude and exposure to sunlight (“adret”). The first category is constituted by a flat land in the bottom of the Champorcher Valley, with alluvial origins. The second one is formed by natural terraces and by the southern parts of the mountains that are exposed to sunlight, corresponding to the ancient path of the glacier that used to flow from the top of the Champorcher Valley.  The third category corresponds to the savage mountain that turns its face towards the shadows (“envers”), which covers more than 600 hectares of surface and is characterized by a reduced exposure to sunlight, the part of the mountain that turns towards North.





History


The first undeniable human presence in the territory of Hône dates from the Bronze Age andthe Iron Age (900 – 100 b.C.):  that can be precised by the discovery of primitive houses under rocks and traces of Alpine paths dated back to the prehistory.

During the Middle Age, Hône became part of Bard Lordship; in 1242, its territory was divided into two different jurisdictions, respectively under the domain of the Savoia Realm and the Lords of Pont-Saint-Martin (who also had its origins at Bard). Subsequently, the duke of Savoia, on March 4th 1592, bestowed his properties to the Bruyset noble family and in 1684 the family gave it to the count Giovanni Pietro Marelli, major-general superintendent of the forces and ammunition of the Savoian Realm.

Few years later, in 1689, count Marelli allowed the construction of a majestic “château à la moderne”, in front of the parish Church of Saint George. The Castle still exists, but it is in need of repairs.

The part of Hône that was property of the Lords of Pont-Saint-Martin, after the extinction of the congregation in 1737, was returned to the Crown and later gave in property to the domains of the Gippa noble family.

During the last three centuries, Hône lives – next to its agricultural activities – a development related to the valorization of metallurgic settlements: foundries and old forges were placed along the banks of the Ayasse
River and, later on, proper and real metallurgic industries substituted the old technology. Among those industries, it is important to distinguish “Fabrique des clous”, a successful industry in the beginning of the 19th Century, established by the Swiss entrepreneur Giacomo Gossweiler, a philanthropist that brought not only economical, but also social improvements to Hône. Nowadays, industrial development has reached its peak, with small and middle-size factories that operate in the sector using modern and high technology.



Monuments


The community of Hône maintains a vast number of monuments that testify its past. Those monuments allow us to remember the old “rus”, small rivers from the hills that were transformed in sources of irrigation, as documented in the 16th Century and still working nowadays. Also during the 16th and 17th Centuries village chapels were built, with special remark to the baroque iconography of the parish Church of Saint George.


Finally, it is important to mention the sturdy bell tower (rebuilt in Romanesque style in the beginning of the 17th Century) and the old Middle Age bridge that join Bard and Hône, rebuilt by the end of the 17th Century and preserved nowadays as it was back in time.

 

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