In the summer of 1960, while Carlo and his wife Luigia were grazing with their cows in Valnontey, they were approached by some French tourists, who wanted to pitch tents on their land for a week and thus be able to go on some excursions.

Carlo said yes, that there was no problem.

A few days later, when it was time to leave, these French gentlemen gave him some money to thank him for letting them sleep on his lawns; to his amazement, Carlo realized that the sum they had been offered was earned in two weeks of work as a turner at the Cogne mine workshop. Furthermore, the French tourists invited him to think about the idea of creating a campsite in that magical place where they had felt so good.

After discussing with his family for some time whether or not it was a good idea, in 1963 he decided to begin work on building the house.

In that same year the main work was to make cement bricks; so Carlo, early in the morning before going to work in the mine workshops, collected sand from the stream and prepared everything necessary for his wife and daughter Luciana to build the bricks during the day.

In 1964, the actual construction of the house began.

Thus, the following summer, that of 1965, in that little corner of paradise that is Valnontey, Carlo, together with his wife Luigia and his daughter Luciana, decided to give life to the Gran Paradiso campsite.

The first house, which served as a reception, a small grocery store and a toilet, did not last very long, since on Easter Sunday 1966, an avalanche destroyed it, compromising it permanently.

That same summer the campsite opened anyway and a tent was used as the reception and at the same time work began on the current structure, now managed by Luciana and her sons Patrik and Manuel.

 

Since 1965, those lands, which for generations had been cultivated and used as pasture for livestock, have become a point of reference for mountaineers and tourists from all over Europe and beyond.