La Rosière : The history of this unique destination

The History of the Ski Resort of La Rosière

The more curious among you will be interested to learn about the the resort of La Rosière and its fascinating history in order to fully appreciate your holiday here. Our comprehensive guide takes a look back in time at the making of the popular Savoie resort we know today.

The Beginnings of a Success Story

The Alpages

La Rosière was originally a hamlet of several chalets  dotted around the verdant mountain pastures in the area of Montvalezan. The chalets were used by local people when they brought their animals up the mountain to graze during the summer months.

The settlement's early development was a reflection of the important criteria of those times, namely easy access and proximity to a water source. Buildings were situated close together so as to use the minimum amount of agricultural land and facilitate mutual co-operation amongst the inhabitants. Today, La Rosière has become a modern mountain resort.

Visitor Accommodation

The year of 1954 saw the construction of the Petit Saint-Bernard bar by Jean Arpin. The following year, Abbot Jacques Poupon developed The Savoyard, a large holiday centre in La Rosière. The resort was now able to welcome a significantly larger number of visitors, who at that time came mainly during the summer months.

Later, Le Gollet, an estate of fifty-seven chalets, was opened. This development set La Rosière apart from many other resorts with visitor accommodation consisting mainly of apartment residences.  

Did you know?

La Rosière had no more than 5,000 visitor beds in the 1980s.

A Resort that has Invested in its Development

La Rosière has always moved with the times, continually adapting to new visitor demands and expectations. Here are a few examples:

• The altiport in 1971
• The tennis centre in 1975
• The golf course in 1988
• The cinema and fitness centre in 1989
• The first tourist residence in 2006

As visitor expectations in the area of wellness continued to evolve, the fitness centre underwent a major renovation in 2017, and was renamed the "Spa de La Rosière". Now, visitors had another reason as well as skiing to come to the resort, with a holiday here becoming an opportunity to relax and fully immerse oneself in the mountain environment.

What About the History of La Rosière's Ski Area?

In the Beginning

It all started in 1878, the year of the third Paris World's Fair. The Norwegian pavilion's exhibition of skis caught the attention of Henri Duhamel, a mountaineer from Grenoble, and this would turn out to be the start of Alpine skiing in France.

The history of skiing in La Rosière began in the 1960s. Before then, raising livestock and agriculture were the predominant activities in the the area, and very few tourists visited the resort. In 1920, however, a group of young skiers decided to form a club called the  "Union Sportive de Montvalezan".

Did you know?

The Saint Bernard dog, an iconic symbol of the resort, was originally introduced to La Rosière in the 17th Century. At that time, the dogs were bred and kept by monks to safeguard and rescue mountain pilgrims. Today, they remain an essential part of the resort's character, and are popular with adults and children alike.

The 1960s, the Start of Winter Tourism

• The start of the 1960s saw the construction of the La Poletta drag lift, the resort's first ski lift, which opened just before Christmas on 23 December 1960. This key date marked the beginning of La Rosière's development as a modern ski resort. It was the inhabitants of the local commune who took the decision to construct the first lift, a local investment that was truly remarkable at that time
• In the same year, with skiing becoming increasingly popular among both local people and visitors, the first skiing competitions were held in La Rosière
• In the mid-1960s, three more drag lifts were built. It was now possible to reach the Roc Noir at more than 3,500 metres in altitude
• From 1964 onwards, the ski area and lift system were managed by SERMA, a private company. In 1975, however, the commune of La Rosière took over SERMA, transferring control and operation of the ski infrastructure to the local people

From this time onwards, new installations were constructed over the years, and the lift system was continuously modernised and upgraded.

An Important Link

In 1984, La Rosière was connected to the Italian resort of La Thuile to form the San Bernardo cross-border ski area. This dramatically increased the resort's attractiveness to visitors, and was a source of great pride for the locals. The connection between the French and Italian sides was via the  Chardonnet chairlift and the Bellecombe drag lift.

This famous international ski area was a great success on both sides of the border, as it opened up access to much more skiing from both resorts.

The Champions of La Rosière

Ideal training conditions, coupled with a  sporting tradition of children starting to ski from a very early age, has helped produce some great ski champions in La Rosière. Down the generations, in all disciplines, the exceptional performances of these athletes have been a source of great local pride.

To mention but a few, René Arpin-Pont became an alpine ski champion, Manu Gaidet was a three-time freeride world champion, and Joël Chenal won the gold medal in the giant slalom at the 2006 Winter Olympics.

La Rosière's history is punctuated by significant events which, together, laid the foundations for its present-day success. In 2021 it received the official seal of approval with the award of the "Famille Plus", "Villages de Charme", "Étape de montagne" and "Grand Domaine" labels.