The Duchy of Aosta, originally the County of Aosta, was a state ruled by the House of Savoy

House of Savoy

The House of Savoy was formed in the early 11th century in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, it grew from ruling a small county in that region to eventually rule the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 until the end of World War II, king of Croatia and King of Armenia...

 from the early 11th century until the late 18th, when its independent institutions were aligned with those of the Principality of Piedmont. The title "Duke of Aosta

Duke of Aosta

In the mid-13th century the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II made the County of Aosta a duchy; its arms were carried in the Savoyard coat-of-arms until the unification of Italy in 1870. The region remained part of Savoy lands, with the exception of a French occupation, 1539—1563...

" continued to be used by the second sons of the Savoyard monarch. The land of the duchy is today a part of Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

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Duke Emmanuel Philibert made French the official language of the duchy in 1561, but it retained its own traditional institutions as late as 1766. It received its first intendant in 1773. It had its own taxation system down to 7 October 1783, when it was brought under the cadaster. According to Jean-Baptiste de Tillier (died 1744):

The duchy of Aosta has always been a state, forming a single undivided body. The seventy-eight church-towers, or rather the cities, towns, parishes and separate communities which exist in the Valley, are members of this state.

Sources

• Giovanni Farrell-Vinay. "Welfare Provision in Piedmont", Health Care and Poor Relief in 18th- and 19th-century Southern Europe, Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, Bernd Roeck, eds. (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 250–88.
• Roger J. P. Kain and Elizabeth Baigent. The Cadastral Map in the Service of the State: A History of Property Mapping. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
• C. W. Previté-Orton. The Early History of the House of Savoy (1000–1233). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912.
• Christopher Storrs. War, Diplomacy and the Rise of Savoy, 1690–1720. Cambridge University Press: 1999.
• Jack D. Street, "The Independence of Savoy and Autonomy of the Valle D'Aosta", The French Review 71 3 (1998), 396–404.
• Geoffrey Symcox. Victor Amadeus II: Absolutism in the Savoyard State, 1675–1730. University of California Press, 1983.