The village of Farettaz in Fontainemore
Location
216 km from Annecy, 117 km from Chamonix, 194 km from Geneva, 62 km from Aosta.
Architectural topics
Fontainemore can pride itself in being one of the most important hotbeds of active emigration (seasonal) linked to the building industry. From San Giuseppe to Santa Barbara, sometimes even at Christmas, men in this community left to carry out their work as building masters in Savoy, in the area of the Aosta Duchy and large cities like Turin, Marseilles, Lyon, Grenoble and even Paris.
The architecture of the buildings in their home town commanded respect. Traces of love for the precision cutting of stone and those high supporting walls of 4 or 5 floors are spread across more than a hundred farmhouses on the steep slopes covered in chestnuts.
Farettaz is one of the best preserved villages; almost completely abandoned, it is made up of different groups of houses linked by well arranged paths. The most interesting is, without doubt, the one where the bell tower of the chapel dedicated to San Lorenzo, stands. The entrance to the site is decorated with a beautiful fountain covered by a stone vault; the tank is fed from a long channel dug out of the rock.
Positioned close together, the houses create a complex formation, separated by covered passages, terraces, gardens and lanes where you can discover an ancient quality architecture, at the centre of which is filled with man sized internal and external spaces, full of the "art of mountain living".
In the village known as "Pra dou Sas", an ethnographic museum was set up. Thanks to the collaboration of the inhabitants, this small local museum shows their everyday objects on the backdrop of a traditional home.