Heritage: Arnad, Donnas

The Echallod Bridge is a stone pedestrian bridge, one of the most picturesque in the Aosta Valley region.

Restored several times over the centuries, it connects the hamlets of upper and lower Echallod to the other villages of the municipality of Arnad, located on the left bank of the Dora Baltea river.

The symmetrical humpback structure rests on three arches supported by sturdy buttresses. On the right shoulder there is a small chapel to protect travellers.
You cross this bridge when you walk along the Cammino Balteo hiking itinerary which here overlaps the route of the Via Francigena.

The village includes the Ohta house-fort, an interesting manor compound built around a significantly large Late Medieval tower with walls over two metres thick and an entrance about 8 metres off the ground. In the fourteenth century, the village was most probably enclosed by a curtain wall or by the connecting surrounding houses. In fact, the men of Arnad were granted concessions in 1321 by Amedeo di Vallaise including the lord’s right to order improvements to the village walls. In addition to some houses that belonged to local lords, which still present “noble” traits, there are many homes owned by the aristocracy, notaries and chamberlains which preserve valuable architectural details such as ample parlours, large fireplaces and graceful “viret or tornette”.

Built by the Vallaise family in the 17th century, the castle has 3 storeys flanked by 2 four-sided towers.
The internal façade opens onto the courtyard, wit a double arcade of light stone columns.

Interesting frescoes of ten fiefdoms owned by the Vallaise family can be admired in the Hall of Honour.
The park holds a hexagonal chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph, Saint Anthony and the Virgin Mary, and with a Baroque polychrome marble altar.

In past times the castle was linked by a covered gallery to the “Castello Inferiore della Costa”, now in ruins.

Acquired in 2010 from the Autonomous Region of Aosta Valley, the castle actually undergoes restoration works in order to be opened to the public.

In the hamlet of Ville stands a complex of buildings, currently in a state of decay and used as a rural dwelling, consisting of a fortified house and a tower, also known as Tor de l’Ohta. The square plan tower is missing its upper section and has walls measuring 2 metres in thickness.
The original door is 8 metres above the ground and is supported by an architrave with a blind arch above it.
You can see several Gothic windows, some decorated with coats of arms and frames.

The tower is mentioned in a document from 1295 as belonging to Pietro of Vallaise.
The structure presents analogies with the primitive towers of Planta in Gressan, Archet in Morgex and Tour d’Héréraz in Perloz.

The Church of San Martino is located in the chief town of Arnad-Le-Vieux. The current building has a trapezoidal layout, with three naves that preserve a roof made of Gothic, low pointed cross vaults. The pillars support large arches that rest on capitals. The facade has a central tuff portal from the 15th century, decorated with a keel-shaped arch, representing two intertwined tree trunks with an overhead rose window. There are slender, single mullioned windows. The bell-tower, with a square shape, has a high, pyramid-shaped spire. The ceiling on the left nave is decorated with Late Gothic frescoes. The subjects represented include “St. George fighting a dragon”, the “Feast of Herod”, a “Crucifixion” and the “Beheading of John the Baptist”.

The shrine is located at a height of 696 metres, in the Machaby valley and not far from the centre of Arnad, in a splendid position among the chestnut forests.
The building, which originates from the fourteenth century, was rebuilt entirely in 1687.
As well as numerous votive offerings, it also contains a seventeenth-century statue of the Virgin Mary, defined by the scholar Bruno Orlandoni as “one of the best masterpieces of Baroque sculpture in Valle d’Aosta”.

How to get there
Simple walk of about one hour through the woods, starting from Arnad’s village centre.

The visit
Celebration of the Holy Mass in the end of the pilgrimage on August 5th, the day of Madonna of the Snow, whom the shrine is dedicated to.

On other days, visits only on reservation, by contacting the parish.

The Gauls consular road, built by the Romans to link Rome to the Rodano Valley, has one of its most characteristic points in the Donnas section, which is dug into the live rock over a length of 221 metres.

The dimensions of the excavation are highlighted by the rocky headland that has been left, within which an arch has been dug out: it measures 4 metres in width, 4 metres in height and the distance between the two jambs is almost three metres: during the Middle Ages it was used as the gateway to the Suburb, which was closed during the night.

On the pavement of the road you can still see the furrows left by the carriages, while a little beyond the arch there is milestone on which the number 36 represents the distance between Donnas and Aosta in miles (approximately 50 km).

In the Verale pasture, at 1215 meters above sea level, stands the chapel dedicated to the transfiguration of Our Lord, founded in 1753. In the village you can also see the community oven used for baking bread.

In the past, the faithful went in procession to the nearby sanctuary of Machaby on 5 August for the feast of the Madonna delle Nevi and, on their return, the following day, they stopped in Verale to celebrate the Transfiguration. Today the celebration takes place on the second Saturday of August.

One of the oldest chapels in the Donnas area, it is located west of the medieval village and was allegedly founded to safeguard the houses from the frequent and dangerous floods of the Dora Baltea river. The chapel seems to have already been mentioned in 1176 in a bull of Pope Alexander III.

The lintel of the entrance portal bears the date 1692, the year in which the chapel was rebuilt. The beautiful stone portal is a reduced-scale copy of that of the parish church of Issime (around 1685).
Inside, you can admire a late eighteenth-century pulpit in gilded and polychrome wood on which figures of saints and flower garlands stand out.

The building in the Tréby hamlet of Donnas, which from 1897 until 1980 hosted the activity of the local social dairy has a double historical and cultural interest as it testifies at the same time to the rural past of the village and to the centuries-old presence in Donnas of the Confraternity of the Holy Spirit, whose charitable activity has survived almost to the present day.

While the premises used up to thirty years ago as a social dairy preserve nowadays the furnishings and equipment for the delivery of milk and the subsequent dairy processing, as well as the documentation and records relating to the operation of the company itself, in the adjoining room, entirely frescoed , the evidence of the activity of the “Confrèrie du Saint-Esprit” emerges, existing since 1012 as reported on the fresco depicting the Last Supper.
You can admire various paintings attesting the work done by the brotherhood in favour of the community. The duty of the confraternity was in fact to translate faith into works of charity, distribute food to the poor and host the homeless in case of fire. The charitable activity of the confraternity continued for more than a century and a half after its official suppression in 1776.

The act establishing a local dairy at Treby dates back to the 25th July 1897.
Five years later, on the 21st May 1902, the dairy bought the buildings of the Brotherhood of the Holy Ghost, where it remained in activity until 1980, when the association broke up.

The building, given to the Municipality of Donnas in year 2000, has been restored and destined, in 2003, to ethnographic museum, furnished with the same equipment and materials originally used at the dairy.