BREUIL-CERVINIA, Valle D’Aosta — The Hotel Hermitage unveiled plans to rebuild a series of abandoned shepherds’ huts that stand in ruins on Bayettes, a private reserve of 400 hectares on the Italian flank of the Matterhorn. The reserve will stay open through the summer, without booking and free of charge, until August 30, the owners said.
The hotel said the works will be carried out on huts that are collabenti, an Italian cadastral term for a building that has collapsed in on itself. The refuges sit along path 10, the public route across the reserve, so walkers pass them as they trek through the area.
The Bayettes renovations land in a market that is moving, experts say. Travellers today “want to have more authentic transformative experiences,” said Amanda Ho, cofounder and chief executive of Regenerative Travel, “and this is how they’re choosing to go to places like regenerative hotels that are really connecting them back to nature.”
“It’s a shift in mindset,” she said.
The huts date back to the 19th century, when shepherds sheltered in them while grazing sheep and goats through the summer. The reserve belonged to the Artaz-Carrel families of the Aosta Valley and is owned now by Corrado and Elena Neyroz. Sheep today still graze there.
The reserve opened to the public on June 26 this year. Path 10 climbs from Avouil at 1,965 metres to the Bivacco Bobba at 2,769 metres, roughly 800 metres of ascent, two and a half hours up. The hotel says the final section suits experienced walkers only.
Award citation
The Hermitage won Best Project, Green Solution for Bayettes at the Ecoluxury Fair in Rome in November last year, when the jury cited biodiversity conservation, restored paths, and the recovery of the historic huts as the motivation for the prize.
The award came from Ecoluxury Retreats of the World, a network the hotel joined in 2023, for a project run with that network. The hotel has already restored traditional rascard, the old timber granaries of the Aosta Valley.
The huts have stood open to the weather for a century. Whether they are standing by next summer tests everything else claimed for this ground.
