Record Atlas
6 eras · 1032–2026 · 2 places

Aosta Valley — Savoy's French-speaking valley

Aosta, Courmayeur, Châtillon, Pont-Saint-Martin, Cogne. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1032–1563 County of Aosta under the House of Savoy no registers survive

Before registers.
1563–1800 Savoy, then the Kingdom of Sardinia FamilySearch

Modern French became the sole official language of the valley in 1536, and French armies occupied it in 1539-1563, 1691 and 1704-1706. Its autonomy rights were revoked in 1770.
1800–1814 France — arrondissement of Aoste, Doire department FamilySearch

The valley was ruled by the First French Empire as an arrondissement of the department of Doire.
1814–1861 Kingdom of Sardinia FamilySearch

Restored to the Kingdom of Sardinia after the Napoleonic period.
1861–1948 Kingdom of Italy — part of Turin province, then its own province of Aosta Antenati · FamilySearch

The valley was incorporated into the province of Turin in 1861. The province of Aosta was created in 1927 and dissolved in 1945, and Italian civil registration began in 1866 for most of northern Italy.
1948–2026 Italy — autonomous region of Valle d'Aosta Antenati · FamilySearch

Italian and French were made official languages in 1946 and the region received special autonomous status in 1948.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1032–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

2 places on this ground

258 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

…and 198 more.

All record regions · The map