Visitor Information

Le Musée de la Vallée à Barcelonnette, Villa La Sapinière, 10 Avenue de la Liberération
Tel: 04 92 81 27 15
Open all year, though only 2-30pm - 6pm except in late July and August when it is open 10am - 12 noon and 2-30pm - 7pm. Take advantage of a guided tour if you can (Tuesday and Thursday in the summer) because the museum tells a wonderful story. Not only does it creatively portray the traditions of mountain life, but explains the fascinating tale of the Arnaud brothers, who left the valley in 1821 to seek their fortune. Their legacy has made the valley what it is today and will amaze anyone who hears the tale.

Fortifications at Tournoux, Roche-La-Croix and St Ours Haut
This mountainous region, crossroads of the great alpine routes, and frontier between Provence and Piémont, the Vallée de l'Ubaye possesses remarkable traces of its military history on its peaks and at the confluences of the rivers. Guided visits to the sites run from mid-June to mid-September - enquire in the Tourist Office for details.

The Vallée de l'Ubaye hosts three main festivals every year. Click here to find out more about them and when they happen.
www.barcelonnette.com

Food of the region...
Ubayenne specialities include ravioli with fillings as varied as ortie (nettle), jambon cru with parmesan or fleur de courgette. Savoury tarts, particularly spinach, or potato and mushroom, also provide plenty of choice for vegetarians. Look out for local cheeses, freshwater trout, and the Alpine liqueur génépy.
La Maison de produits de Pays, Jausiers
We defy anyone to go in this shop and come out empty-handed. All the products are made by artisans and producers in the Vallée de l'Ubaye. It's particularly notable for honey from Alpine flowers and lavender, jam from the sweetest fruit you've ever tasted, and a vast range of charcuterie and dairy produce. There are also crafts, pottery and leather goods. Products available by mail order.
Farmers' markets are held weekly in July and August in Place de la Mairie in Barcelonnette, though the regular market every Wednesday and Saturday mornings on Place Aimé Gassier is also worth visiting and is packed with local specialities such as the ravioli described above.
Place Manuel in the heart of Barcelonnette is where you will find a variety of restaurants and bars with a warm and relaxed atmosphere.

Into the Vallée de l'Ubaye

While holiday crowds jostle for position beside the Mediterranean or simmer among tourist hotspots inland, in the Alpes d'Haute Provence things are refreshingly civilised.

A generation ago the Ubaye and Durance rivers were dammed near their confluence, creating the vast Lac de Serre-Ponçon, whose azure expanse shimmers invitingly below the final climb towards the Vallée de l'Ubaye . After cresting the summit the route plunges between modest hill farms and dense larch forests to follow the river through deep gorges before things eventually open up amid broad, fertile plains . The effect is almost like entering Shangri-La. And, as we'll soon discover, I'm not the first to feel this way.

Until the road opened in 1883 the entire valley was cut-off from the outside world each winter, as heavy snows closed the high passes providing the only access over the surrounding mountain ranges. While life was hard, the resourceful people of the villages dotted around the valley became adept at coping with their situation. Farmers herded livestock up to the rich summer grazing on the high alpine pastures (or alpages), then guided them safely down again in autumn, in the age-old ritual of transhumance. Wool and timber were also traded with lower-lying areas, and across the nearby border with Italy ( Piedmont actually ruled the valley for long periods before Savoie was ceded to France in 1713).

Today farming has been joined by tourism, welcoming visitors who come to discover the villages, forests and surrounding mountains via an expanding network of marked footpaths and cycle routes. Life in the valley centres on the small town of Barcelonnette, whose geometric street-plan is a legacy of 13th Century town planning. Founded in 1231 on the site of a Gallo-Roman settlement by Raimond Béringer V, Count of Provence, its name reflects the family's Catalan origins in Barcelona. The cultural melting-pot produced some exotic touches in the architectural style of the townhouses, seen to best effect in the principal thoroughfare of Rue Manuel. Here densely-packed façades rise through five or even six storeys, their faded pastel stucco punctuated by tall windows with louvered, persienne -style shutters and elaborate wrought-ironwork balconies. Down at street level, large vaulted spaces once given over to stables are now home to comfortable restaurants and a healthy selection of boutiques selling everything from fresh bread and hand-made pasta (a local speciality) to hardware and, naturally, outdoor activity clothing and equipment.

Leaving the square, past the imposing monument to local dignitary Jacques Antoine Manuel, I pause beside a simple plaque commemorating three brothers who had an adventure which was to have a profound and lasting impact on the whole valley. Inspired by the opening up of new opportunities overseas, les frères Arnaud travelled to Amsterdam, New Orleans and finally to Mexico, where they discovered a thriving economy combined with a conspicuously underdeveloped commercial infrastructure. The news was hurriedly passed back to the valley, prompting a wave of emigration to set up businesses, including a series of Parisian-style department stores. So handsomely were the émigrés' entrepreneurial acumen and determination rewarded that many fortunes were made. Wholesale and retail companies were followed by industrial manufacturing bases and even financial institutions, including the National Bank of Mexico.

In time, though, many of the more successful pioneers were drawn back to their beloved valley, where they used some of their considerable wealth to commission fashionable architects to design elegant villas in which to enjoy a comfortable retirement with their families. Between 1870 and 1930 around sixty or so villas would eventually be constructed between Barcelonnette and neighbouring Jausiers, their eclectic styles clearly inspired more by prestige coastal developments than the more functional architecture of the mountains. A century or so on, the shock of the new has passed, and the villas form an important part of the historical heritage of the valley.

Smaller and sleepier than Barcelonnette, Jausiers shares the latter's cheerful Franco-Italian style (the 17th Century église Saint-Nicolas-de-Myrrhe, for example, is pure Piedmont Baroque ) and packs a lot into its pedestrianised heart. During the 18th Century the village was a centre for silk production, and on the wall of one of its former mills, later the home of the Arnaud family , I pause at another marble plaque in homage to the local celebrities before heading towards the ultimate expression of their legacy: the Château des Magnans. Sited in a prominent position beside the road which climbs from Jausiers towards the Col de la Bonnette (at 2802m Europe's highest pass), this fairytale extravaganza was commissioned by Louis Fortoul, founder of Guadalajara's celebrated Fabricas de Francia store. Constructed between 1903 and 1914, the design fuses Bavarian and Venetian neo-Gothic and for all its obvious pastiche is today listed as an historic monument.

Beyond Jausiers the Ubaye turns northwards past la Condamine-Châtelard and the Fort de Tournoux, a spectacular military tour-de-force whose construction began in 1840 and continued to provide prosperity for the village for almost sixty years. For all its colossal scale, the fort's complex network of galleries and multiple levels is concealed deep within the austere rock face towering over one of the more defensible points along the valley. Leaving the D900 to its assignation with the Italian border at the 1948m Col de Larche, I continue beside the river on a route defended by a much smaller fortress known as the Redoute de Berwick and dating from 1709. After passing through a couple of tunnels the road begins to climb more steeply towards the Col de Vars (2109m).

The river, naturally, has other ideas, and following it means turning off at Saint-Paul-sur-Ubaye, whose first impressions are deceptive. Beneath the superficial chocolate-box mountain village persona lies a most untypical collection of extravagantly-proportioned homes constructed, like the villas of Barcelonnette and Jausiers, by newly-wealthy Valëians returning from Mexico (a glance at their monuments in the cemeteries of all three villages shows that even death provided an opportunity to display their worldly success). Galvanised iron sheeting may have largely replaced timber shingles as the preferred roof covering, but like much else in the upper valley, time seems to have little meaning here; the village fountain dates from 1714, while the église was reconstructed in 1472.

Beyond Saint-Paul the road becomes less-travelled yet ever more rewarding, the few man-made features convincingly upstaged by the sheer majesty of the landscape. A long-abandoned Ligne Maginot gun emplacement is today barely visible at the roadside, but the Pont du Châtelet is truly spectacular. This slender, single arch of stone hangs a vertigo-inducing 108m above the river, and looks and feels for all the world like a medieval pack-mule bridge, but was actually completed in 1888, providing access to the tiny village of Fouillouse and the border territory beyond. By now the valley is becoming ever wilder, with only the trickle of water over the stony riverbed and the shrill cries of marmots high on the mountain slopes to disturb the solitude.

The road finally narrows then peters out completely in the neighbouring hamlets of Maljasset and Maurin, at an altitude in excess of 1900m, making them (purpose-built ski villages excepted) the highest communities in all Europe. Despite its remoteness, the mountainside above Maurin once supplied white-veined green marble for Napoléon's tomb and the steps of the Paris Opéra. Activity ceased long ago, but at the peak of its success the quarry employed over 100 people, and supplied customers as far away as the USA.

My journey of a modest 70 or so kilometres has followed the Ubaye while it threaded its way between the massifs of Parpaillon, Chambeyron and Séolannes, whose noble peaks soar to over 3,000m. It's proved to be a highly entertaining travelling companion, showing me things I'd otherwise never have discovered.

© Words and pictures Roger Moss
The full version of this feature first appeared in everything France magazine Issue 46

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