Fort de la Platte has a claim to fame, being listed on dangerousroad.org! Sadly, we weren’t aware of that and had a very interesting drive in our hired VW Golf! The map below gives you a little taster of the routes! The fort is a nineteenth century creation in the Swiss/French/Italian border area, near the famous Les Arcs ski area.
Visiting Fort de la Platte
This is what our hire car looked like after we reached the top:
It is not an easy place to get to as there is a single, narrow and oh so winding road with occasional passing places. The car park at the top is very small so people basically dump their cars on the road which further limits access. When we visited there were no facilities and you couldn’t go inside the fort as it is privately owned.
My Experience
We visited on a gorgeous August day so the place was pretty busy. Other than the drive this has to be one of the most fantastic places I have visited and the pictures show just how beautiful the setting for the fort is. In summer at least. I can imagine that for 6 months of the year it is pretty much inaccessible!
Fort de la Platte Photo Gallery
History
In 1882, the Kingdom of Italy joined the Triplice , increased its Alpini units and began to fortify the Alps . In reaction, the French Republic created its mountain troops (in particular the battalions of alpine hunters ) in 1888 and launched the modernization of its alpine fortifications. In Haute- Tarentaise , the Petit-Saint-Bernard pass leads to the Aosta valley : the surroundings of Bourg-Saint-Maurice , at the bottom of the pass, are therefore fortified.
On the heights of the right bank of the Isère , lie the battery of Vulmix (at an altitude of 1,050 meters), the Fort du Truc (at 1,551 m) and the blockhouse of Platte (at 1,993 m), the first two covering with their artillery the national road 90 (current D1090) which descends from the pass, as well as the forest of Malgovert on the other side. The Platte blockhouse is used to protect the two structures below. Upstream, directly under the pass, the advanced defense is entrusted to the Fort de la Redoute Ruinée and below to the Roc Noir structure.
On the other side, left bank of the Isère, just opposite the bends of the national road, the flanking of the Truc and the prohibition of the Versoyen ravine (leading to the Col de la Seigne) are entrusted to four partially concrete batteries and converted into 1913-1914: dual Courbaton (battery no 3 and 3a, at 1500 m above sea level), one Leuchelet (battery no 4 to 1700m above sea level) and the heads ( battery no 5 to 1800m above sea level) for cannons 120 mm long.
References
The history above is copied from the excellent Wiki page (translated from French) here.