La Promenade des Mines

La Promenade des Mines follows the coal-mining history of the slopes above La Thuile, where miners worked for more than three centuries. Its gallery mouths, aerial tramway traces and reconstructed rail track tell how "black gold" shaped the valley.

Why it matters

The ground itself is the first exhibit: the coal seam here reaches the surface, staining the earth almost black, which is why mining began in these woods as early as the 16th century. The official portal tells a story that runs from the first concessions of 1831 and the Savoy state's 1838 mining regulations, through the innovative transport schemes of the Paris period (1918–1926) run by an entrepreneur born in La Thuile, to the peak of activity under Ansaldo Cogne from 1928, tied to the magnetite mines of Cogne and the Aosta steelworks. When declining extraction and transport difficulties ended the mine in 1966, the valley pivoted almost immediately to winter tourism. The Promenade is part of La Thuile's open-air museum, preserving this industrial history among the valley's heritage sites.

What to notice

The trail reads as a sequence of industrial traces being reclaimed by the forest. Old mining installations remain half-hidden in the undergrowth, alongside the routes of aerial tramways, ventilation openings, exploratory boreholes and gallery mouths screened by vegetation. There are also the charcoal-burning sites where carbonai produced charcoal before the industrial mine took over. The trail's centrepiece is a section where the mine railway has been reconstructed with its rails, and a gallery sheltering the large hoist (argano) that once hauled loaded wagons to the higher levels. Interpretive panels along the route explain the miners' daily life, the technical side of the mining craft and the geology of the deposits that made La Thuile one of the principal mining territories of the Alps.

Context and history

Mining here moved from informal, local exploitation to a regulated industry over the 19th century: the Savoy state imposed rules in 1838 to control the diggings and begin the demanialisation of the subsoil, following the first concessions of 1831. The 20th century brought industrial scale. The Paris period of 1918–1926 introduced ingenious solutions for moving the mineral down the mountainside, and from 1928 Ansaldo Cogne — already owner of Cogne's magnetite mines and the Aosta steel plant — drove extraction to its peak. The economics never fully favoured a mountain mine, and in 1966 falling output and transport costs closed the parenthesis; the community retrained almost overnight towards the ski industry that defines La Thuile today. The Promenade, created within the open-air museum programme, preserves the material traces of that history.