La Thuile
The Miner’s Profession

The building opposite, once home to the offices and management of the La Thuile mines, was constructed in the 1930s together with the Cogne mining complex. On the ground floor were the technical, administrative, and management offices that coordinated every phase of extraction and production.
In the large central hall stood a detailed scale model of the mine’s tunnel system and an updated excavation plan, revised monthly by technicians to reflect progress underground. The first and second floors contained the apartments of the mine’s senior staff, including the company doctor, Dr. Montesano; the mine manager, Engineer Clerici; and the industrial experts Civelli and Bernardini.

It was within these offices that engineers and specialists planned mining operations, translating technical designs into the demanding daily labour performed by the miners. Equipped with pickaxes and pneumatic hammers, the workers excavated galleries to reach the anthracite seams, dropping the extracted coal down chutes to be loaded by hand into small wagons below.
The mine’s most iconic feature was the massive winch — a powerful mechanical system that hauled the heavy wagons of anthracite along an underground incline, overcoming the steep difference in level between the extraction zone and Arpy. From there, the coal continued to Morgex for washing and processing, before being shipped by rail to Aosta and the Cogne steelworks, part of the Ansaldo industrial network of Genoa.
After the mines closed and the families left the Pera Carà barracks — later repurposed as the Padre Kolbe Holiday House — the large hall on the ground floor of this building was transformed into a refectory and kitchen, while the upper floors were adapted for accommodation and administrative offices.

The Technical Buildings
In front of the main Villaret gallery entrance once stood the group of technical buildings that formed the operational core of the mining complex.
To the left of the entrance were the electrical conversion rooms and the compressors that generated the compressed air used to power drills and ventilate the tunnels. On the right, a long, low structure housed the lamp room — where carbide lamps were refilled and maintained — the forge for repairing tools (especially pneumatic hammer bits), and the carpentry workshop, where timber was cut and prepared for underground supports.
The surrounding yard contained warehouses, garages, and maintenance workshops for locomotives. A network of narrow-gauge rails crossed the area, serving the small trains that transported coal and waste rock. The latter was discarded down the slope towards the Dora river. Other tracks arrived from the Preylet gallery on the opposite side of the valley: wagons loaded with anthracite crossed a bridge over the Dora and the road, passed through the yard, and re-entered the tunnel system to reach the winch that hauled them toward Arpy and the loading station for transport to Morgex.
After 1959, these tracks led directly to the newly built washing plant to the west, which replaced the Morgex facility for the final processing of anthracite.

The Washing Plant
The La Thuile washing plant was built in 1959, during the final years of mining activity. By that time, Cogne had progressively reduced its exploration and extraction operations, culminating in the closure of the Morgex processing plant.
From then on, the anthracite wagons no longer travelled via Arpy but were unloaded directly into the tall tower of the new facility in the Villaret yard. Through successive stages of crushing, washing, and screening, the anthracite was refined to produce fine coal dust used in the manufacture of graphite, furnace electrodes, and for electricity generation.
The crushed material settled in three large tanks constructed below the plant, and the fine coal was later loaded onto lorries and transported down the valley for sale.
Nearby stood two long rectangular buildings dating from 1942, originally erected during the Second World War to accommodate militarised workers — soldiers assigned to the mines in place of frontline service. After the war, one of these buildings was converted into a warehouse and later demolished, while the other became a cinema seating up to 200 people. Managed directly by Cogne, the cinema offered weekly film screenings and became a popular meeting place for miners and townsfolk alike.
In the 1980s, the site was redeveloped to host a waste compactor and car park, later adapted into a motorhome area.

The Winch
At an altitude of 1,765 metres, on the slopes of Bois du Buic, a tunnel entrance led to a large concrete-lined chamber housing the powerful winch — the mechanical heart of the transport system that linked the lower extraction levels with the upper loading stations.
This massive installation lifted the wagons filled with anthracite from the Chaz Dura extraction zone (near the Preylet tunnel at 1,491 metres) up to 1,738 metres near Arpy. From there, the coal travelled by cableway to Morgex, and then by rail along the Pré-Saint-Didier – Aosta line to the Cogne steelworks, where it fuelled the furnaces of the Aosta Valley’s iron and steel industry.
Outside the winch chamber stood a concrete platform marking the start of the old cableway to the hamlet of Preylion, alongside components of the mine’s ventilation system — silent witnesses to the immense engineering effort that sustained La Thuile’s mining operations.