Aosta

This weekend was a weekend filled with tons of adventures and things to do so i will start with one of my favorites- our trip to Aosta.
     
Aosta isn't typically on the American tourist place. It was taken over by the Romans in 25 BC (and people had been living there much earlier) and remained a Roman stronghold until the fall of the Western Roman Empire. As with most of Italy, following the fall of Rome, the city changed hands frequently, going to the Burgundians, then the Ostrogoths, then the Byzantines, followed by the Lombards, the franks, Charlemagne, Burgundy and then finally the savoy family though it remained separate from Italy until 1948 (The Savoy family had granted Aosta special status when they acquired it). When the Romans took over the town, they laid out their usual grid pattern which is still very visible today. Today it's home to a little over 35,000 people and was in the running to host several of the last winter games. The city had hoped to get an event during the 2006 games but didnt as Torino kept all the winter events in Piedmont. 

Our trip started early in the morning, getting on the first train to Aosta. The two hour train ride was pretty cool. As we got closer and closer to the Alps, we saw more castles begin to pop up and the trees get denser. Our trip almost ran into a snag before we got off the train. About an hour and a half into the train ride, the police came through the train, asking people for their documents. USAC had told us to not carry our original passport if we weren't leaving the country because if we lose that, we could be in some hot water so a photocopy would be good. Following those directions, i handed the police officer my copy of my passport, me receipt for the Permit of stay and my school ID, figuring it would be best to overload him with IDs as opposed to call anything into question. He stood there staring at the photocopy for about five minutes and in the fastest Italian I have ever heard, asked where the original was. In my best panic-mode Italian, I told him that we had been told to carry a photocopy and that the original was being held by the school (though i knew it was at my apartment instead, figured this was a better rout to take). He stared at the photo copy for another 5 minutes and then finally said to bring the original next time. Having only really been to the US and the BVIs, carrying your ID (unless flying or driving) isn't a big deal. Especially now being closer to an immigrant than a resident, I have found myself on the other side of the having to carry documents equation and all I can really say about it is that it's a pain in the butt. Its cumbersome and a pain. Definitely will be glad to not need it everywhere I go. The train ride in though, despite that, was pretty cool.

The alps looming in the distance on our way out of Torino

But on to Aosta! 

Caesar greats us as we walked through an old roman gate

Aosta has a quaint mountain town feel and is a 2 or so hour hike from the Matterhorn but had a ton of ancient roman ruins that are in great condition. We got in town and walked to the main piazza and it was pretty awesome. The main royal residence has now been turned into a hotel but the statues in front remain and the piazza is the heart of the town. 

We walked down the old main roman road (which has been there for about 2100 years which is cool in of itself) and walked by a ton of cool stores with everything from mountain stores selling Toques and traditional patterns to jewelry stores (tons of jewelry stores) to traditional Italian and French stores like meat shops, kebab stores, cheese shops, clothing stores. Thats right, Kebab stores are everywhere in Italy. We have one right next to our apartment and its amazing. I have no idea how these arent more popular in the states. But that is a topic for another conversation... Not too far down the road was the ancient roman gate to the town which was much more massive than I would have thought it would be. 

Inside the gate is now a restaurant

yep, a restaurant. exactly what I think the Romans had intended for this space...

Supposedly, this restaurant has awesome Fonduta- which is the local dish here

We walked a bit farther down to look at the triumphal arch (though I don’t know what triumph the arch was commemorating) and that was cool. 

We walked from there toward a big bell tower that we were hoping to get to climb to the top and get some good pictures of the whole town and the surrounding alps. When we got there, there was a wedding so we didn’t even get to check out the tower much but decided to try to hang closer to the tower and check it out. We turned around and literally saw a very very old tree that has been there for over 480 years and beside it was a Dario Berlier exhibit which was very cool but pictures were forbidden and there were people all over the place so I didn’t even try for fear of making the locals grumpy.

The Bell tower off in the distance

after leaving that exhibit and seeing the wedding still going on, we continued down the road we were on and started to get into residential areas so we tried to slowly work our way back. We finally found an entrance back into the roman area and slowly meandered down the streets. We walked down one alley and found the old Roman Theater. The Roman theater was remarkably cool. I dont know what i expected but this was far beyond my imagination and was one of the coolest things I think we hvae seen while we have been here. 

This wall was the old entrance to the theater- must have been a cool sight to see!

This was the old stage

From there, we went back to the road we walked in from and headed back to the heart of the city. Before getting into the main tourist part, we found a wine and chocolate store. We stopped in, got a bottle of wine for the four of us to split that was made 3 kilometers away up in the alps. It was pretty good, as was the plate of cheeses and meats and breads the owner brought to us. He was a really cool guy and seemed to love having us in there. He showed was all excited about all the wines and seemed to love showing us everything and all the wines from the area, telling us what grapes they came from... the whole nine yards. 

Our Wine Choice

When we left the wine shop, we went back to the gate we entered in and headed west instead, toward an old defense tower. We had hoped to make it into a tower because the views would have been amazing, however, when winter comes and moisture gets in the buildings, they close them because of stability issues. Heres some pictures of the tower's interior.

From there, we headed toward the western entrance into town toward what roughly translates to the lepers tower, where a leper was jailed during the 17th century and was the story behind the novel Le lépreux de la cité d'Aoste.

 

Not seeing a closed for the season sign, we decided to wait around for the opening hours, which were in about if minutes so we hung out on the ancient roman wall and got to look at the alps

We decided to continue heading down the old wall, searching for the fourth corner of the old roman area and meandered down random streets. I found a really cool old street that wasn’t very wide but was decorated wonderfully. There was garland arching over this tiny road with Christmas lights intertwined in them and decorations hanging down from them, like stars and things of that nature. 

We continued down the street and found ourselves back at the main piazza by complete accident. We took one of the few roads we hadn’t walked down yet and quickly found ourselves at the old church in Aosta, which was surprisingly cool. There were several frescos painted on the front door, relieves of the saints of the church and another relief but I can’t remember of what. We walked inside and it was very cool. There were a ton of old paintings, one of which was dated 1707, old doors to the church, one of which was dated 1601, side rooms with paintings that looked to have been tattered a bit during wars and battles. We walked up to the Apse of the church and the stairs were so old that they were won where people have walked on them that the marble felt slanted toward the nave of the church. We walked down the other aisle of the church and looked at more old paintings. The roof was very cool looking, with a ton of ojival arches and things like that. 

You can see, if you zoom in, the layers of paint this has had on it, from the basic wall it was 1500 years ago to the fleur de lis and then another fresco on top of that

We walked back outside and one of the guys said hey guys, what’s over here so we followed him down some stairs into a courtyard and down stairs into a tunnel. The tunnel we had stumbled upon is known as the cryptoporticus, which was a part of the ancient roman temple complex. It was very cool and has been excavated in the last 30 years. They are working on excavating more of it and highlighting its importance for tourists in Aosta. The person working there, like 95% of people in Aosta speaks fluent Italian and French, but no English whatsoever. So I actually held a 20-30 minute conversation with her in Italian about the use and design of the cryptoporticus, when it was built, where it was, the history of Aosta… 

 I found out that a cryptoporticus wasnt where anybody was buried like one would imagine with the word crypt in there but it was simply the roman name for a covered walkway. At the end of the conversation, she told us to go down a couple streets, turn right and find this yellow building, go in this side road and there was a museum of what they had excavated from the site. We followed her directions and found a cool museum that had old roman coins, old roman armor, old roman board games, old roman vases, glass work… 

The original layout of the city

On the left is the Roman theater, the right is the Amiptheater

The front of the theater. what exists today is what is in grey

The Roman Forum and Temple area

The towns old name on an old  map

Anybody need this for their horse?

An old depiction of Aosta

At this point, it was about 5 and we decided that we should eat and try to get back to Torino at a reasonable time because there are some people who are going downtown to bars to watch the Super Bowl (it started at like 12.45am here). We started walking to each restaurant we had found that day, all across the town, retracing our steps for the majority of the day searching for a restaurant that was open. No restaurant opened until 7.15 and since the last train out was at 9, we didn’t think dinner would be reasonable to try to complete. Meals in italy are two to three hour events, there is no such thing as a quick meal (if you are eating real italian. In a Kebab place or an American fast food restaurant you can do it quickly but we can do that anywhere). So we went back to the train station, looked at the schedule and bought our tickets. On the schedule, the next train out was in about 30 minutes so we assumed we were good. When it failed to ever show up on the board, we began to worry, only to finally find out that the next train out wasn’t until 7.30. I decided that I would walk around town some more, though I was very tired, to waste some time and found a cool gelato shop, got some gelato and watched the sun set in Aosta. I made it back to the train station at about 7, got some final pictures from the platform of Aosta and got on the train for the two hour ride back to Torino.

All in all, minus not getting any fonduta, the trip to Aosta was wildly successful. Since its only a couple hours hike from the Matterhorn, I may find myself back in Aosta on a weekend where i hike to the Matterhorn and hopefully then I can get some Fonduta. Hope you had a great weekend and hope you enjoyed reading this!