Few guests
A house is offered whole, or not at all. We do not split a stay into odd rooms and a shared lobby.
The house
A name for the valley and the mountain.
Vaelmonta comes from the vale and the mont — the low light of a valley and the peaks that close it in. We named the atelier for the only two things we refused to improve.
How the houses came to us.
It began with a single timber house above a lake, and a wish to leave it mostly alone. Friends asked to stay. We said yes, then learned how few yeses a house can bear before it stops feeling like itself.
A stone villa in Haute-Savoie followed, already half asleep under cedar. Then a refuge in the Dolomites that had been dark for a decade. We restored what the weather had taken and added very little else.
Vaelmonta is the small atelier that looks after the three. We staff them, keep the kitchens, and decide when the doors open. There is no fourth house in a pipeline. Letters are read by people, and a full calendar is allowed to stay full.
What we keep to.
Three habits, held across every valley.
The valley leads
Menus, opening dates, and the length of a walk follow the season, not a brochure printed in January.
Letters, not a queue
You write. A person answers. If we cannot host you, we will not invent a waiting list to soften it.
The work is mostly restraint: when not to add a room, a rule, or another house.