Three explanations circulate for the village's name, and they are not equally comforting: Fontaine de Saint-Maur, after a spring said to glimmer with fireflies; Fontana Mora, for the dark colour of the algae on its bed; or Fontaine de la mort, because the water contained arsenic.
Legend prefers the first version: in 543 the monk Maurice, arriving from Oropa over the Col de la Balme, sat on a stone in the little square and water sprang from it; the chapel he asked for was finished in the seventh century. Fontainemore is the easternmost comune of the Aosta Valley and joined the Borghi più belli d'Italia in 2023; in 2022 its 449 residents secured national recovery funds for villages at risk of abandonment.
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📅 Every year, on 17 January
Fontainemore celebrates Saint Anthony the Abbot on 17 January; every five years the procession from Fontainemore to Oropa is held, first recorded as early as 1557, perhaps the oldest Marian procession in the Aosta Valley.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Fontainemore, but an easy day trip away.
