Orsières

Access

Orsières can be reached from Italy via the Mont Blanc Tunnel and the Chamonix Valley, or via the Great St Bernard Pass (closed in winter, when only the motorway tunnel on the Italian side remains open as far as Bourg-Saint-Pierre). From Martigny, the rail and road hub of the Lower Valais, the cantonal road winds up the Dranse Valley fromEntremont to the village of Orsières, then continuing towards the Great St Bernard Pass to the south-east or up the Swiss Val Ferret to La Fouly and Ferret to the south-west. The municipality is served by the St-Bernard Express railway line (TMR – Transports de Martigny-Combe et Régions), which connects Martigny to Orsières with regular services; from here, connections continue by PostBus to Champex-Lac, La Fouly and the villages of the Val Ferret, with reduced frequency during the low season. The nearest international airports are Geneva and Turin, both accessible by road or by a combination of train and road. In winter, winter tyres are compulsory on mountain passes, and temporary closures due to snow are common on the higher sections of the Val Ferret.

Introduction

Orsières is a municipality in the Canton of Valais, Switzerland, situated in the district of Entremont, at the confluence of the Entremont Valley and the Swiss Val Ferret, at the foot of the Mont Blanc massif. The main village lies along the Dranse d’Entremont, at an altitude of just over 800 metres, whilst the municipal territory extends southwards to the glacial peaks that mark the border withItaly and France, rising to over 3,800 metres. It borders the Swiss municipalities of Bagnes, Bourg-Saint-Pierre, Bovernier, Liddes, Martigny-Combe, Sembrancher and Trient, the French town of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc and, on the southern side, the Italian towns of Courmayeur and Saint-Rhémy-en-Bosses. A historic crossroads between the Great St Bernard Pass route and the Val Ferret, today the municipality is a key destination for international alpine hiking, with the villages of Champex-Lac and La Fouly serving as stages on the Tour du Mont Blanc.

Description

The municipal area of Orsières extends across two distinct valleys that converge at the main village: the Swiss Val Ferret, which runs south-westwards to the Petit and Grand Col Ferret passes, and the Champex basin, a valley suspended to the north of the main town. The Val Ferret is carved out by the Dranse de Ferret and enclosed by an amphitheatre of glacial peaks from the Mont Blanc massif, including the Dolent, l’A Neuve, Saleina, d’Orny and Angroniettes; a large part of the upper valley constitutes a federal wildlife protection area. The municipal territory rises from the valley floor, with woods and hay meadows, up to the summit ridges that mark the border with Italy and France.

First recorded in 972 as Pons Ursarii – in an incident in which theAbbot Maiolo of Cluny was captured by a group of Saracen raiders at the bridge over the Dranse, then the valley’s only crossing – Orsières was a stop on the Via Francigena, the pilgrimage route to Rome described in the account by Sigeric of Canterbury. The territory gradually came under the control of the House of Savoy between the 11th and 13th centuries, before becoming part of the castellany of Entremont, based in Sembrancher, between the 14th and 15th centuries. In May 1800, the valley was crossed by Napoleon Bonaparte’s reserve army as it marched towards the Great St Bernard Pass. The parish church in the main town, first recorded in 1150 and originally dedicated to Saint Pantaleon and later to Saint Nicholas, was rebuilt in the 15th century.

The traditional economy, based on alpine cattle rearing and cheese-making – still practised according to traditional methods in some of the Val Ferret’s mountain pastures, as part ofcontext of the Valais summer transhumance, recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage – has, since the end of the Second World War, been complemented by a growing alpine and hiking tourism industry, centred on the villages of Champex-Lac and La Fouly. Since 2023, the municipality has held the ‘Cité de l’énergie’ certification for its municipal energy policies. The Orsières patois, a variety of Valaisan Franco-Provençal, is spoken in the area; today, it is limited to a minority of residents in the Entremont district.

The natural environment of the Val Ferret is home to ibex (Capra ibex), chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) and marmots (Marmota marmota), as well as a wolf population (Canis lupus) that has stabilised in recent years; the protection of wildlife within the federal hunting reserve prohibits hunting. The glacial landscape of the upper valley, dominated by Mont Dolent, Tour Noir and Aiguille d’Argentière, is one of the defining features of the municipal area.

The range of hiking opportunities is centred on a dense network of paths leading to the glaciers and mountain passes of theupper Val Ferret – the Lacs de Fenêtre, the Fenêtre de Ferret, the Petit and Grand Col Ferret, and the Tête de Ferret – with support from Swiss Alpine Club huts such as the Cabane du Trient, the Cabane de l’A Neuve and the Cabane de Saleina. The municipal area is crossed by the Tour du Mont Blanc, with stages at La Fouly and Champex-Lac, and is a route for some of the most famous trail running races in the Alps: theOCC (Orsières–Champex–Chamonix), 61 km and 3,400 m of elevation gain, and the CCC (Courmayeur–Champex–Chamonix), both part of theUltra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, whose main route (UTMB, 174 km) passes through La Fouly and Champex-Lac as intermediate aid stations.

Information

General information

Area: 165.00 km²
Altitude of the main town: 887 m
Highest point: 3,820 m – Mont Dolent
Population: 3,292 (as at 31 December 2024)
Name in dialect: patois d'Orsières (Franco-Provençal/Valaisan Arpitan)
Name of inhabitants: orsiérins
Patron saint: Saint Nicholas of Myra, celebrated on 6 December
Neighbouring municipalities: Courmayeur – Saint-Rhémy-en-Bosses – Bagnes – Bourg-Saint-Pierre – Bovernier – Liddes – Martigny-Combe – Sembrancher – Trient – Municipality of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France
Canton: Canton of Valais
Country: Switzerland
Official website: orsieres.ch