Mont Avic Regional Park visitors centre - Champorcher

The building
The visitors centre of the Mont Avic Nature Park was created by restoring ‘Villa Biamonti’, a building constructed in the first years of the 20th century as a tourist residence. The restoration preserved the most characterizing elements of the building, reinterpreting in contemporary terms some of its peculiar features such as the use of wood in the internal spaces. The building was designed with anti-seismic criteria outlining the use of low environmental impact materials as well as the maximum respect of the parameters relating to energy efficiency and rational use of renewable sources.

The visit
The information office and a reception room are located on the ground floor.
The exhibition area, complementary to the Park’s Visitors Centre in Covarey of Champdepraz, was designed with the aim of the active involvement of the guests and describes the geological, morphological and biological aspects of the high altitude environments of the Park.
The first floor is dedicated to the most interesting geological and morphological characteristics of the Dondena valley, with a rich series of photographic images, finds, dynamic and plastic models on which themed maps are projected.
Flora, vegetation, fauna and pastoral activities are illustrated on the second floor. Particularly interesting are the installations about small and large predators, realized using models and finds in a unusual and very original way.

Inside the Centre the map of Mont Avic Park scaled at 1:25,000 can be purchased for 5,00 €; it includes useful information for hikers - in Italian, French and English – and two simplified cartographic inserts.

Another reliable guide to the routes, refuges and refreshment points of the Park is the Mont Avic Park APP, which can be downloaded for free both for iPhone and Android. It can also be used in offline mode, it therefore also works where there is no signal.