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All French heritage classified by regions, departments and cities

  2. Divers
  3. Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur
  4. Hautes-Alpes
  5. 05100 Montgenèvre

  6. Mont Chaberton Building

Mont Chaberton Building à Montgenèvre dans les Hautes-Alpes

Hautes-Alpes

Mont Chaberton Building

    94 Tunnel de Cesana
    05100 Montgenèvre
Photo de Mont Chaberton Building
Crédit photo : Riotforlife - Sous licence Creative Commons

Timeline

XIXe siècle
Époque contemporaine
1900
2000
1898-1910
Construction of Italian battery
21 juin 1940
French-Italian artillery fuel
1947
Annexation by France
4 février 2021
Historical monument classification
Aujourd'hui
Aujourd'hui

Heritage classified

The work of Mount Chaberton, in total, comprising: the battery with the glacis, the retaining wall and its discharge arches, the arrival station of the cable car, the loading room, the officers' barracks and the troop barracks, the guard post, the underground galleries, the access road to the top of Mount Chaberton from the guard post and the remains of the barbed wire network on cemented supports, located at the Col du Chaberton and at Mount Chaberton on parcels Nos. 11 and 17, shown in the cadastre on section AC and on parcels Nos. 2 and 3 in the cadastre section AD, as delimited in red on the plan annexed to the decree: inscription by order of 4 February 2021

Key figures

Luigi Pollari Maglietta - Major of Italian Engineering Directed the construction of the fort (1898-1910).
Spartaco Bevilacqua - Italian Captain Commander of the fort in 1940.
André Miguet - French lieutenant (polytechnician) Directed the French fire in 1940.
Charles de Gaulle - President of the Provisional Government Insista for annexation of the fort in 1947.

Origin and history

Mount Chaberton, the summit of the French Alps, peaks at 3,131 m in the Cerces mountains, is distinguished by its pyramidal shape and its summital plateau. Located in the commune of Montgenèvre (Hautes-Alpes), it belonged to Italy until 1947, then integrating the Piedmontese commune of Cesana Torinese. His common name, "Le Chaberton", evokes his emblematic profile in the Briançonnais.

In 1898, Italy – a member of the Triple since 1882 – began the construction of a defensive battery at the top, led by Major Luigi Pollari Maglietta. Eight 12 m high masonry towers, armed with 149 mm guns under light armored domes (50 mm at the front), were erected between 1898 and 1910. A road is drawn from Fénils (Suse Valley), and the top is lowered by 6 m to accommodate the structure, nicknamed "cloud battleship". Designed to dominate Briançon (18 km of theoretical range, reduced to 16 km in practice), it is then considered invulnerable.

During the First World War, the guns were dismantled in 1915 to be redeployed against Austria-Hungary. Rearmed under Mussolini in the 1930s, the fort integrated in 1940 the Western Vallo Alpino, with a garrison of 340 men under the command of Captain Spartaco Bevilacqua. Equipped with DCA machine guns, he directly threatened the French fortifications of Briançonnais, such as the works of the Janus or the Infernet.

On 21 June 1940, an artillery duel opposed the Chaberton to two 280 mm French Schneider mortar batteries, camouflaged at Eyrette and Poët-Morand. Directed by Lieutenant André Miguet (polytechnician), these pieces have been firing for 10 km below, with parabolic trajectories culminating at 5,000 m. In a few hours, six of the eight Italian turrets were neutralized, causing nine deaths and fifty injuries. Turrets 7 and 8, intact, continue to fire until the armistice of 24 June 1940.

Abandoned in 1943 and briefly reoccupied in 1944 by paratroopers of the Italian Social Republic, the fort was annexed by France in 1947 via the Treaty of Paris, on the insistence of General de Gaulle. Metal remains were dismantled in 1957, leaving only masonry bases and underground galleries, now degraded. Ranked a historic monument in February 2021, the site reflects the Alpine border tensions and ballistic progress of the 20th century.

External links

Page Wikipedia
Page Monumentum