This church has three names, in three different languages: in Italian it is San Giacomo, in French Saint-Jacques, and in töitschu, the Germanic speech of Issime, Sent Joapuksch Chilchu. This is not folklore: the inhabitants of this valley descend from the Walser, who in the middle ages crossed the Alps from the Valais and brought their German with them, keeping it for centuries in the middle of a Latin world.
What to see
The first record of the church is of 1184, in a bull of pope Lucius the Third; in the same century Issime obtained autonomy from the parish of Perloz. The present building comes from a rebuilding begun in 1683, of which the contract survives by which the curate awarded the works.
The high altar was built between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, and in the mid eighteenth the churchyard was laid out, articulated in fifteen niches. Restorations in the nineteen-eighties brought to light remains of the original church, and shortly afterwards the museum beside the church was opened.
Visiting
The church is on the main square of Issime, in the Lys valley, on the road climbing towards Gressoney; it is a parish church and opens for services, while the museum has its own hours to check. Half an hour.
Our editors' tip
Before going in, read the village signs. The töitschu of Issime is not the same language as the titsch spoken at Gressoney, a few kilometres higher up: two neighbouring Walser communities have kept two different varieties. A few hundred people keep alive a tongue spoken nowhere else in Europe.