ü  PATRIMONY à HISTORY : Allevard-les-Bains

Mentioned at the beginning of the medieval period, the Pays d’Allevard find his economic and human development thanks to its subsoil richness in iron ore. This green nature will offer to these new peasant all the necessary resource for their subsistence. This mountain agriculture will conform at the climates’s harshness and at the season rhythm. The powerful iron industry is going to transform them and to impoverish them in the forest resources.

Thus, born this little country above the Gresivaudan’s valley which will become a red touchstone for their quality work until the biggest men of France take an interest to it. This plura-activities necessary for a survival and for the enrichment of the country is going to attract many immigrants eager for success and for prosperity during several generations.

At XIX s. a miraculous spring allows at the city to take the nouns of Allevard les Bains and to leave its position of industrial village. The Pays d’Allevard goes over tourism thanks to its natural patrimony and its mountain lacks which attract many tourists.

But it’s the time of battle :

The Pays d’Allevard, frontier country, is situated between 2 unfriendly brothers : the Ducs of Savoie and the Dauphin whose principality of Dauphiné extended over the current departments of Isère, Drôme and Hautes Alpes.

Castles and other fortifications attest of this warlike period. The country’s fate will definitively be sealed by the sale of Dauphiné to France’s Realm.

The swimmers :

1790, during a seism a spring appears in front of the inhabitants of Allevard. Because of the deposit which she leaves with the contact of the air, the water which passes by the Breda’s Bank is nicknamed “black water” by the inhabitants. Now, it must prove the therapeutic virtues . The thermal resort born verily at the beginning of the XIX s. by the Pierre Villiot’ and Laurent Chataing ‘s will. The transition is fast between some baths and showers given in the first house of the spring and the pretty spa-town of Brouet-Recour which settles down in the nice park outside the city. With the doctor Niepce’s arrival, the resort finds its medical way. The cares are directed to respiratory tracts. Famous cure-taker come to take advantages of first excursions as Alphonse Daudet or many Italian tenors came rejuvenate in the “resort of the voice”

White gold’s epic :

Before the resort’s creation, skiing knew in Allevard an heroic period. The ski become fastly for children of hamlet a way of transport to join the school of the valley. In 1923, Antoine Cros, famous hairstylist creates with several associate the Allevardin Ski Club. Some years later, the same team creates the Society for the development of passionate people Allevard’s valley. The construction of the Collet’s road opens the slopes covered by the snow for skiers. So the village creates the Collet d’Allevard’s ski resort. The first skilift strat in 1956 to climb the skiers on the Malatrait’s slopes, sliding at about 50 years old of History. A new wintry economy appears, strengthened some years later by the creation of the 7 Laux’s ski area and the barrioz’s Nordic space. The ski resort is today well-known for his family and nocturnal domain.