In the early 19th century, one traveller was charmed by the beauty of the Vallon women. He had left Samoëns and followed the Sixt road. Today, if Vallon is your destination, you have to turn off the main road and head for the foot of the Criou range. Here, you will catch the first glimpses of a community so unusual that it was a major factor in the "Area of Architectural, Artistic and Historic Interest" title awarded to ti. Of course, if you really want to see what is unusual about it, you have to bow to your curiosity and take a walk past the farms in Vallon d'en haut and Vallon d'en bas. Although modern buildings are beginning to nibble at an area originally used for farming, the houses have retained signs of the intensive use made of a rugged environment.

To withstand an often hostile Nature, the large farms regrouped, standing cheek by jowl and reinforcing their owners' feeling of safety. A walk in the village reveals a society that built up around a cheese plant which used the milk collected every day in the farms in winter and in the Criou mountains in the summer. Also bringing the community together were fountains where people would stop for a cool drink and where sheep used to stop to drink. One group drank from a spring gushing from a tree trunk; the other proudly drank the water from a column skilfully decorated by one of the village sculptors, François Mugnier. Life in Vallon, though, has another centre - the 17th-century chapel with its octagonal bell turret and a dome consisting of excessive curves. The Baroque influence is obvious here. Dedicated to the Apostles James, Philip and Joseph, the chapel was built in 1636 as a plea to the end of a plague outbreak.

Every time the mountains are mentioned, snow and avalanches immediately come to mind: in 1831, an avalanche poured down the slopes of the Criou range and deposited a deep covering of snow that reached up to the belltower on the church. It remained until 15th August. Is it possible that the saints had attracted it to provide protection for the village? In 1999, an avalanche stopped just short of the chapel. This, though is not the main danger. Fire and water risks have regularly threatened the villagers. Whether the village is being administered from Samoëns or is an independent community as it was from 1738 to 1811, Vallon has always regulated every day life in a manner that is restrictive but essential if the village is to escape plague and other dangers. The interconnection between the farmhouses and their outbuildings, and the vast buildings clad in pine explain how a fire can spread so quickly and become a disaster. The beautiful grey or iridescent cladding catches fire easily because the farms store large quantities of hay.

Flooding was another regularly-occurring danger requiring constant surveillance until the Giffre and Clévieu rivers were dammed, lessening the risks. Daily life continued in the sheltered entrances heated by the rising sun, the vegetable plots in front of the houses and the neighbouring orchards. From beehives to haylofts and from barns to houses, the villagers worked hard to maintain the farms and outbuildings which were so close to each other and so similar in the choice of building materials and layout that they could almost have been carbon copies of each other. Yet the architecture is far from monotonous! As you stroll through the village, look at the differences in the galleries with their rectangular bars or traceried balustrades. Note the alternating use of stone and wood, and the air vents in the haylofts above the houses. Two commas can be combined to form bull's horns, hearts or flames; four commas create a curved swastika. Other buildings display the symbols from packs of cards. A closer look at the doorways, columns and carved lintels gives an indication of the villagers' tastes - behind their apparent austerity, they like simple discrete beauty steeped in tradition.