It is everywhere in the village and in colored places, houses, chapels and fountains …
The gray stone, which turns black when it rises in marble, as can be seen with the font of the Notre-Dame church of the Assumption. This Urgonian limestone was once exploited in eight quarries around Samoens. In 1659, the Frahans (name given to stonemasons) were so numerous in Samoëns and their know-how so famous that they came together in a very famous brotherhood called to the world’s greatest projects: by Vauban for his fortifications, then by Bonaparte for the canals of Saint-Quentin, Givors and even further in Poland or Louisiana.
Today, two stonemasons continue the tradition and the brotherhood has become a cultural association: “The society of masons”.
And every two years in August, contemporary creation crosses this ancestral material at the Stone Sculpture Symposium, where many great sculptors come together. Thirty works of this event have also been installed in different parts of the village.
