Valle d'Aosta

Valle d'Aosta (Val d'Aosta or Val d'Aoste) is a mountainous region in the northwest. In the English language it is usually called the Aosta Valley.
The region has two official name: Regione Autonoma Valle d'Aosta (in Italian) and Region Autonome Vallee d'Aoste (in French). The capital is Aosta.
The valley goes up towards Mont Blanc. It is the route out of Italy to the North-West. It was used by Roman armies, and the proof is in the archaeological artefacts found in Aosta. The town has been both French and Italian over the past few centuries, and the street names in Aosta are in both languages.
It is the smallest region in Italy, with an area of , and a population of about 126,883. It is the only Italian region which has no provinces. The regional government has taken all the administrative functions of a province. The region is divided into 74 comuni.
Limits
Its frontier to the north is with Switzerland (Canton Valais), to the west with France (region Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes), to the south and east with the Italian region of Piedmont.
Geography
The Valle d'Aosta is a small valley, the valley of the Dora Baltea river, with some smaller side valleys. It is in the middle of the Alps, surrounded by four of the tallest mountains throughout Italy and Europe:
Mont Blanc; height: (), the highest mountain in the Alps.
Matterhorn (German), Monte Cervino (Italian) or Mont Cervin (French); height: ()
Monte Rosa; height: (), the second highest mountain in the Alps.
Gran Paradiso; height: ().
In the Valle d'Aosta, a region with many mountains and close to the borders with other countries, the mountain passes are very important. Even though now there some tunnels, the passes are important. They add a historical and geographical perspective which is important to tourism and tradition.
The main mountain passes between the Val d'Aosta and other valleys are:
The Little St Bernard Pass (French: Col du Petit Saint-Bernard; Italian: Colle del Piccolo San Bernardo), between Savoie, France and the Valle d'Aosta;
The Great St Bernard Pass (French: Col du Grand Saint-Bernard; Italian: Colle del Gran San Bernardo), between Valais, Switzerland and the Valle d'Aosta;.
The southern part of the territory is occupied by the Gran Paradiso National Park, created in 1922 to protect plants and animals in danger of extinction.
The valleys were made by glaciers moving at a time when the entire region was covered by them. Currently, glaciers occupy only the highest peaks.
The Dora Baltea () river flows along the whole Valle d'Aosta, from the northwest to the southeast; it is long and is a tributary of the Po river.
Mountain communities
The 74 comuni - with the exception of Aosta - of the Valle d'Aosta are organized in mountain communities (, ). There are eight mountain communities:
Comuni with higher populations
The 10 comuni of the Valle d'Aosta with the higher populations (January 2017) are:
People
A person from the Valle d'Aosta is called a Valdotian (, ).
Population
The total population of Valle d'Aosta on 1 January 2017 was 126,883, of which 61,976 were male and 64,907 were female.
Evolution of the population in the Aosta Valley
Languages
Italian and French are the region's official languages and are used for the regional government's acts and laws, though Italian is much more widely spoken in everyday life. Of the population of the valley 96% speaks Italian as either a first or second language. Of the population 70% speaks French as either first or second language. School education is given equally in both Italian and French.
The regional language is a dialect of Franco-Provencal called Valdotain (locally, patois). It is spoken as native tongue and as second language by about 58% of the population, according to a poll taken by the Fondation Emile Chanoux in 2002. The residents of the villages of Gressoney-Saint-Jean, Gressoney-La-Trinite and Issime, in the Lys Valley, speak two dialects of Walser German origin called Titsch and Toitschu respectively.