Emarèse

The names of the villages read like a map: Érésaz comes from the Latin arcensis, the plateau; Sommarèse is the upper plateau, Émarèse the lower one. The town hall, for the record, is at Érésaz.

The land registry of the Kingdom of Sardinia, closed on 11 November 1771, counted 5,968 plots here, divided among 201 owners bearing 45 family names in all. From the late nineteenth century to the 1970s the village lived on the asbestos of the Chassan-Settarme quarry: in 2012 the area was listed as a site of national interest awaiting clean-up. The 228 residents live on the adret, the sunny slope; the borna de ghiasa survives, the pit where ice was kept through the summer.