For years, this small village has been distinguished by… the presence of the devil. Literally! A quick stroll through the streets and you come across him everywhere.
Is an evil village hiding in France? Everything suggests so… Here, the 350 or so inhabitants of this town perched at an altitude of 1,750 meters in the Alps, live with the devil as their symbol! But don’t think that they are worshipers of the evil spirit. The reason lies in a very old legend.
Since 1857, this small Alpine village has displayed wooden statues for everyone to see representing a creature with horns, a pitchfork in hand and a mischievous look, visible on the facades of houses, in shop windows, along fountains or even inside artisan workshops. This four-horned devil has become the icon of the village and can even be found on the postal torch. He is nicknamed the Devil of Bessans. Because, yes, it is in the small town of Bessans, in Savoie, that this tradition continues, which seems surprising.
It all starts from an old legend that the inhabitants of Bessans have passed down for generations. In 1857, a conflict broke out between the priest and a cantor (a singer in a religious service, editor’s note) named Étienne Vincendet over a meal. Teasing and with a vengeful spirit, he would then have sculpted a devil carrying a priest in his arms and would have placed the object under the religious’s window. Suspecting who was making such an offering to him, the priest brought the work back to the sculptor. “The merry-go-round continues until the sculptor, tired, gives up. The figurine remained on a window corner where a tourist noticed it and bought it. A unique business had just been born“, adds the local site Maurienne.fr.
But another legend also exists about the presence of the devil in the village of Bessans. Indeed, the most common legend has it that a contractor, named Joseph, responsible for building a bridge to connect the forts of Esseillon and unable to finish it in time, made a pact with the devil.
The devil agreed to build the bridge in one night, in exchange for the soul of the first person to cross it. A clever resident then sent a goat to the work. Furious at having been duped, the devil embedded his head in the stone, giving birth to the particularity of the Devil of Bessans which is often sculpted with four horns. The bridge has since been named the “Devil’s Bridge”.
