Liberty and Modern Architecture in Alta Valle di Susa

The Liberty route reaches the Alta Valle di Susa where, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the mountain becomes a space for the invention of new sports disciplines: the birth and spread of skiing and winter sports in the Susa Valley are sanctioned by the foundation in 1908 of the Bardonecchia Ski Club and in 1909 by the first downhill championships on the Colomion slopes, tested in the jump by Adolfo Kind and Harald Smith.
Bardonecchia, Sauze d'Oulx and Sestriere become spaces for the invention and construction of the mountain, true laboratories of urbanization and landscape by Turin architects and engineers who with creativity and innovation design hotels, villas and condominiums to host the Turin aristocratic and upper-middle-class elite who practiced skiing.
Bardonecchia, with the propulsive thrust of the Frejus tunnel at the end of the nineteenth century, saw the birth of a first form of summer tourism limited both in terms of flows and social composition, becoming a mountain town: neighborhoods of villas, avenues, architecture around the Kursaal (1911) or the Palazzo delle Feste.
The architecture of the period interprets the eclectic style of the Swiss chalet which is reflected in the projects of the tourist and spa towns of the time equipped with services adequate for the limited and elite clientele. Worthy of being remembered, even if some have unfortunately been demolished, are the villas or buildings designed by Carlo Angelo Ceresa, which wound along the Borgo Vecchio crowning the Palazzo delle Feste: villas immersed in gardens, separated by fences and picket fences to isolate them from other buildings, among these Villa Conte (1908), Villa Devalle (1912), Villa Ceresa (1908), Villa Gardino.
The growing fame as a holiday resort was accompanied by the expansion of the hotel offer to accommodate larger numbers ensuring high levels of comfort such as the Palazzo Frejus (1928).
The spread of skiing in the following decades led to a reconversion of the economy of the localities of the Alta Valle di Susa orienting it towards the construction of ski lifts and ski jumps and the construction of buildings increasingly at the service of mass tourism: in Sauze d'Oulx, the Chalet Carlo Mollino (1947) for the arrival of the sledge lift, the Colonia Fiat (1937) by Bonadè Bottino, in Bardonecchia the Colonia IX Maggio (1937) by G.L. Montalcini, known as Colonia Medail and today the Olympic Village, the Colonia Italsider of Sansicario in Cesana.