Word: aosta
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...Alpine rampart separating southern and northern Europe. Up its tortuous trails from the Rhone valley climbed tumultuous hordes of Gauls and Germans to sweep down on Italy. And this way, says legend, came Carthaginian Hannibal and his elephants. Climbing the other way, from the beautiful Val d'Aosta, came Caesar's Roman legions intent on conquering tripartite Gaul and planting the legionary eagles on the banks of the Rhine. Nineteen hundred years later, after crushing the Austrians at Marengo, Napoleon and his grenadiers retraced Caesar's path...
Pride of the Italian Alps is Sestriere (see color pages), a name relatively new to Americans. Its two circular hotels, La Torre and the Duchi d'Aosta, rear out of the snow like overgrown silos; the Duchi guest rooms are reached by a continuous ramp around a sunlit core, something like Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum with chambermaids. Both La Torre and the Duchi d'Aosta are moderately priced inns; their sister hotel at Sestriere, the Principi di Piemonte, ranks high in Europe's catégorie luxe, is decorated with expensive taste and has rates...
Limbering Up. In Aosta, Italy, Salvatore Bracciorosso was arrested after using his wooden leg to fell several opponents in a barroom brawl...
Married. Austria's tall (6 ft. 2 in.), exiled Archduke Robert of Habsburg, 38, second in line to the nonexistent Habsburg throne; and stately (6 ft.) Princess Margherita of Italy's royal house of Savoia-Aosta, 23, niece of Italy's ex-King Umberto, in Bourg-en-Bresse, France...
Locally, the new Route blanche highway will bring together in trade the Chamonix valley on the French side of the mountain and the Aosta valley on the Italian. Aosta hydroelectric projects will be able to pipe power cheaply to France through the tunnel; snowslides make it impracticable to run high tension cables over the Alps...