Portraits of France: Bonneval-sur-Arc
The first in a six-part series on French villages
Although life in a French village might seem idyllic to outsiders, the survival of France’s rural communities is increasingly threatened. Often it takes an alliance of locals and newcomers to keep things going. Such was the case in Bonneval-sur-Arc, an isolated hamlet in the French Alps, 425 miles southeast of Paris. At an altitude of more than 6000 feet, Bonneval is the highest village in the Maurienne, the valley created by the Arc River in the Savoy region of southeastern France.
The population was down to just 130 back in 1953 when Gilbert André, the scion of a family of industrialists from the Vosges, passed through during a tour of the Alps. With no electricity or running water, and depending solely on local products, Bonneval hadn’t changed much since the Middle Ages. André was enchanted by the village, and soon he and the town they needed each other. In 1956 he became the mayor, a post he held until 1995 except for a couple of years here and there. (He died in 2018 at the age of 91.) In lieu of a salary, he ate lunch and dinner in a different home most days.
Today, Bonneval is a small but modern center for winter skiing and summer mountaineering. Fortunately, except for the ski lifts, the village looks much the same as it did hundreds of years ago; contemporary additions, like electric lines and telephone wires, have been buried underground (something American cities and towns should seriously consider, despite the endless excuses not to do so.)
Today there are about 255 inhabitants, many of them native to the village. The population began to grow again when women from elsewhere in France married local boys and stayed to raise families, the opposite of the trend in much of France. Although tourism now plays a big role in Bonneval’s economy, many of the villagers are still farmers. Some families have been there for hundreds of years, producing the milk used to make Beaufort, Tomme de Savoie, and other local cheeses.
The cuisine of the Savoy, as might be expected in a rugged environment, is simple and hearty, with meat, potatoes, and cheese for staples. So villagers have welcomed the outsiders who have opened restaurants used to cuisine that is more soigné, as the French say.
Whether you come to Bonneval for the skiing, the food, or the rarified air, you may not want to come back down from the mountains again—at least not very soon.
