Tourist-Hotel
"Villa della Regina"
History
Origins of the "village of Staffal"
"Village of Staffal" is one of the first centres of the
Walser colonization during the XIIth century on the southern
side of the Mont Rose, at 1,823m. As a typical villages was
made up of four or five houses with the winter stable and the
barn, the mill and the common furnace for the bread, the
"stadel" (a granary) for the conservation of barley and
rye.
The name originates from "Staffele" that is diminutive of the german word Stufe (step) and represents the softening of the valley in a flat border before falling again toward the torrent.
Over the centuries, thanks to the itinerant business activity carried out by local people during the long winter inactivity period, on the markets of German Switzerland and of southern Germany, the houses, orginally in all wood, were transformed in stone and some rooms became more refined and bourgeois, maintaining however the structure of the original farmer house.
Beck Peccoz family, whose commerce at
the other side of the Alps were particularly active, became
the sole owner of the houses and from 1801 to 1876, they
restored the entire village, they built a nwe house (called
"white house"), they restructured the largest of the farmer
houses and then they replaced the stadel and all of the other
farmer houses with one splendid hunting house (1876), refined
and peasant at the same time. This structure is typical from
the Gressoney architecture, that does not have replies
elsewhere, as entering into the middle-class, never involved
leaving the agricultural activity, that was the original
root.
The renovated houses were so dear to queen Margherita, guest of baron Luigi Beck Peccoz in a luxury mansion in Gressoney St. Jean, that she elected this place as her favourite residence, and came here whenever royal engagements allowed her to. All this happened in the summers from 1891 to 1894, till when the baron died while bringin the queen to Zermatt through the hill of the Lys (4,200m).
In the hunting house, "the villa", the queen had her living room, the bedroom and the dining room. In the peasant house nearby, on the pleasant balconies and in the rooms fitted with woods and sweet-smelling of hay, she used to spend great part of her time, in what herself used to call her "atelier", devoted to embroiderys, designs and long talks with ladies companion.
The west side of the Villa, not visible from the access road, had peasant plaster and the typical balcony for hay drying. On the other hand the front side had rich decorations, and a wide fronton with balcony and pink plaster. The inner atmospheres continuously alternate peasant and smooth: one room on the ground floor and five at the first floor are elegant, while all the others are cruder.
The decorations and the comfort so close to the rural
atmosphere fascinated the mountain climber queen, at the
extent that she defined this place like "the paradise in the
terrestrial paradise of Gressoney".
The restoration and the new destinations
In 1997 a precious restoration took place. All these elements of the original construction have been conserverd.Today the hunting house is a tourist-hotel residence, with 17 apartments variously sized: the role of the servitude (it's a must for a village like that), is assumed today by a professional hotel service.
The farmer house, connected to the hunting house through an internal way, has includes a bar, a restaurant and a meeting and entertainment area.