Before that, Amé Gorret offered the translation of Val Dubbia, the valley in doubt, contended between the people of Gressoney and Valsesian—the border between the two went back and forth during history.

[2] The most ancient document so far found about the places[3] gave probably the easiest answer: in 1251, Walser pioneers got permission to colonize the ground they could find going behind the mountain pass above 'Valdobbia', the still existing hamlet of Verdobio just downriver on the opposite side of the main town of Gressoney-Saint-Jean.

Those hamlets was (still are) a short distance one from the other, forming a sort of larger community both in the Vogna Valley and in the area nowadays named Alagna as a modification of "Im-land", "the country/land".

Riva Valdobbia was on the border of those two cultures and two languages, in a melting pot that did not work up too much between the Italians and the Germans, while the two communities were divided in separate administrations or consolidated in the old “Pietre Gemelle” back and forth during centuries.

The well-known distrust between the two communities is still there in local traditions: an old saying is that the Riva's dog guards the Alagna's pig to get to and eat the Vogna Savoy cabbages—in other versions, to get to the Mollia's Raviciooin, another kind of cabbage.

Few days later, 27 May 1800 a French unit of 2,561 soldiers and cavalrymen followed the same path, stopped briefly at "La Peccia"[6] than stormed south down the valley to clash with a small Austrian rearguard (the so-called "Battle of Varallo") and then rejoined their main force coming down Simplon Pass, via Orta and Sesto Calende.