Bellecombe vesuvianite: Alpine locality famed for sharp, prism crystals in rodingite-serpentinite, olive-green to wine-red hues, prized for form by collectors.
Key facts
Bellecombe is one of the great Alpine vesuvianite localities: not a broad commercial gem deposit, but a classic collector occurrence where rodingite veins in serpentinite yielded sharp, lustrous, prismatic crystals in deep olive green, greenish brown, reddish brown, and wine-red tones. The best specimens have a compact, architectural look—blocky tetragonal prisms with bright faces, striated sides, and crisp terminations, sometimes set in pale rodingitic matrix or accompanied by hessonite, diopside, clinochlore, and grossular.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The setting is the Bellecombe antigorite-serpentinite of the Piemonte Zone in the Italian Western Alps. The mineralization belongs to the rodingite world rather than to the more familiar limestone-skarn world of vesuvianite: calcium-rich, silica-poor metasomatic rocks and veins formed where mafic protoliths interacted with serpentinizing ultramafic rocks. In plain collector terms, that setting is why Bellecombe specimens so often feel “Alpine” in the strictest sense—sharp silicate crystals in compact, hard, vein-derived assemblages rather than drusy crusts or loose skarn pockets.
The locality’s scientific importance rests on the same feature that makes the specimens distinctive. Bellecombe rodingites record multiple generations of Alpine fluid activity, including vesuvianite-bearing veins that postdate earlier garnet- and diopside-bearing stages. Gemological work on Bellecombe and nearby Montjovet material demonstrated that transparent pieces can be cut into small stones, but also showed why the locality never became an economic gem source: vesuvianite is irregularly distributed in heterogeneous rodingite bodies.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Collectors look first for luster and form. The most desirable Bellecombe vesuvianites are not necessarily the largest pieces, but the ones with glassy faces, complete terminations, strong vertical striation, and a convincing body color—olive green, golden green, reddish brown, or dark wine-red. Miniatures and thumbnails dominate the trade. A clean, doubly terminated crystal or a balanced cluster on matrix can be far more desirable than a larger but bruised aggregate.
Search for specimens: View all vesuvianite specimens from Bellecombe, Aosta Valley, Italy
Bellecombe is a village locality in the municipality of Châtillon, Aosta Valley, northwestern Italy, recorded at approximately 45.73333° N, 7.65000° E. In mineralogical usage, “Bellecombe” refers not simply to the village but to the surrounding rodingite-serpentinite occurrences that have yielded vesuvianite, hessonite, grossular, diopside, clinochlore, epidote, alumovesuvianite, and related Alpine calc-silicate species.
The deposit type is rodingite in serpentinite. The rodingitic rocks were formed by metasomatic alteration of mafic material within ultramafic host rocks during serpentinization and subsequent Alpine metamorphic-fluid events. Published work describes the Bellecombe occurrence as fine-grained rodingitic rocks within antigorite-serpentinite, derived from basaltic dikes and cross-cut by several generations of veins. Vesuvianite belongs to one of the later vein generations in that sequence, after earlier chlorite-diopside-grossular, andradite-grossular-diopside, and garnet-rich assemblages.
Massimo Novaga’s 1994 gemological study covered an area of about 12 square kilometers northeast and northwest of Bellecombe, noting massive serpentinite and Cretaceous rodingite-vesuvianite rocks. In the field, the rodingite-vesuvianite bodies occur as brown or pink fine-grained veins and lenses, with the calc-silicate assemblage including diopside or augite, epidote, garnet, chlorite, and vesuvianite. The same study noted that rodingite veins are visible in serpentinite near Montjovet and near the road from Ussel to Bellecombe, and that chlorite borders at the margins of the veins are a characteristic feature.
The locality is not a modern commercial mine for vesuvianite. Its importance is specimen-based: classic Alpine material, historically collected and circulated through European collections, with additional material appearing from older stocks. Novaga concluded that gem-quality vesuvianite occurs in the Bellecombe-Montjovet rodingites, but that economic extraction is not feasible because the rodingites are heterogeneous and the vesuvianite is not uniformly distributed. The same paper stated that the area was protected by the Valle d’Aosta regional authority, so collecting should be treated as permission-dependent rather than as open casual access.
Notable finds are best understood as specimen types rather than single famous pockets. Bellecombe has produced thumbnail to miniature clusters of sharply terminated green to reddish brown crystals, occasional wine-red clusters, doubly terminated individuals, and specimens with small hessonite crystals on or around vesuvianite. Older European collection pieces—especially those with crisp form, excellent luster, and minimal bruising—are the standard against which new trade offerings are judged.
Bellecombe vesuvianite is characteristically prismatic and tetragonal, often with square to rectangular cross-sections, flat terminations, bevelled edges, and longitudinal striation on prism faces. The best crystals have a dense, glassy luster that can make dark crystals look almost black until light catches the green or red-brown translucency at the edges.
Color is one of the locality’s pleasures. Published gemological work describes Banchette and Bellecombe material as greenish brown, while collector specimens show a wider visual range: dark olive green, golden green, brownish green, reddish brown, and wine-red. Nearby Ponte delle Capre material was distinguished as more yellowish brown in Novaga’s study, and later abstracted work described Mt. Ros material as brown to reddish brown, with its color attributed to relatively high titanium content. For Bellecombe-labeled collector pieces, the strongest demand is for saturated olive-green crystals with high luster, or red-brown to wine-red crystals that show translucency in transmitted light.
Typical specimen sizes are small. Individual crystals in published and dealer-described specimens commonly range from a few millimeters to around 2 cm; Novaga reported prismatic crystals from Banchette and Bellecombe reaching 3 cm in length. Faceted stones from the Bellecombe-Montjovet study weighed 1.2 to 3.1 carats, a useful reminder that transparent material exists but is limited and usually inclusion-bearing.
The associated minerals are central to recognizing the locality. Mindat’s locality list for Bellecombe includes alumovesuvianite, grossular including hessonite, diopside, clinochlore, epidote, actinolite, muscovite, prehnite, titanite, wollastonite, zircon, apatite, and chlorite-group minerals. On specimens, the most familiar associations are clinochlore, diopside, grossular or hessonite, and pale rodingitic matrix. Brownish hessonite grains can provide a sparkling warm background to upright vesuvianite crystals; diopside and clinochlore give many pieces their green Alpine matrix character.
Gemological measurements provide an additional locality fingerprint. Novaga separated studied Valle d’Aosta vesuvianites into two types: Type A with refractive indices around 1.724–1.736, and Type B with values around 1.714–1.722. The Bellecombe and Banchette samples fell in the lower-index group, with yellow-to-green dichroism reported for Loc. Banchette and Bellecombe material. The study also recorded abundant inclusions, especially fluid inclusions in small tubes or channels and in negative crystals, explaining why cuttable material is real but generally small and not abundant.
Quality in Bellecombe vesuvianite is a combination of sharpness, luster, color, completeness, and context. Top crystals should be well terminated, show clean striation, and have strong reflectivity on prism faces. Matrix can add value when it frames the crystals rather than swallowing them; hessonite association is a plus when it is bright and undamaged. A small, pristine, deeply colored crystal is preferable to a larger piece with worn terminations, chipped edges, or dull faces.
Bellecombe vesuvianite is a classic locality material with a loyal European following, and good pieces are not abundant in the general market. Recent listings show miniatures and thumbnails appearing through specialist dealers rather than in large quantities: examples around 3–4 cm with sharp crystals have been offered in the several-hundred-euro range, while smaller thumbnails and sold archive pieces demonstrate continued demand for clean, lustrous crystals.
Authentication is usually a question of locality accuracy rather than treatment. The species is not commonly treated in the way many gemstones are, and I found no documented treatment or fake problem specific to Bellecombe vesuvianite. Still, mislabeling can happen because dark green or brown vesuvianite from other Alpine rodingites can look superficially similar. A credible Bellecombe specimen should fit the locality’s visual language: prismatic green to brown vesuvianite, often with hessonite, diopside, clinochlore, grossular, or pale rodingitic matrix, rather than a flamboyant Jeffrey Mine color style or a coarse skarn association from another source.
Condition matters strongly. Bellecombe crystals are often blocky and robust-looking, but edges and terminations chip readily enough that magnification is essential. Check the top faces for contact marks, the bevelled edges for small bruises, and the base of crystals for repairs or rehealed-looking breaks. Many otherwise attractive specimens have backside contacts; these are acceptable when honestly disclosed and invisible from the display face. Display-face damage on a thumbnail, however, sharply reduces desirability.
Specimens with old collection provenance deserve extra attention. Pieces from older European or North American collections, including documented dealer stock and named collections, carry weight because significant new production is limited and collecting access is constrained. Labels reading Bellecombe, Châtillon, Valle d’Aosta, Val d’Aosta, or older variants such as “Aoste” may all refer to the same classic locality, but “Bellecombe” should not be casually expanded to nearby Banchettes, Montjovet, or Ponte delle Capre unless the label or documentation supports it.
For a serious locality suite, the ideal group would include a lustrous olive-green miniature, a reddish brown or wine-red crystal group, a vesuvianite-hessonite association, and a small sharp thumbnail showing the textbook tetragonal form. Faceted Bellecombe vesuvianite is much less commonly encountered and should be bought with gemological documentation if locality is part of the price.
Massimo Novaga, “Vesuvianite from Bellecombe and Montjovet (AO Italy): a material of gemmological interest,” The Journal of Gemmology, 24(3), 1994, pp. 173–177 — The key gemological paper on Bellecombe-Montjovet material, covering field setting, rodingite petrology, crystal habit, refractive indices, density, inclusions, dichroism, and economic limitations.
Massimo Novaga, “Caratterizzazione mineralogica e gemmologica dei filoni rodingitici di vesuvianite nell’area di Bellecombe (Aosta),” Rivista Mineralogica Italiana, 21(4), 1997, pp. 360–366 — Abstracted in Gems & Gemology Fall 1998; describes vesuvianite in Bellecombe-area rodingite veins, including Mt. Ros and Banchettes material, optical properties, specific gravity, and cut stones of 1–3 ct.
Simona Ferrando, M. L. Frezzotti, P. Orione, R. C. Conte, and Roberto Compagnoni, “Late-Alpine rodingitization in the Bellecombe meta-ophiolites (Aosta Valley, Italian Western Alps): evidence from mineral assemblages and serpentinization-derived H2-bearing brine,” International Geology Review, 52, 2010, pp. 1220–1243 — The major modern geological paper on the Bellecombe antigorite-serpentinite and its multiple vein generations, including vesuvianite-bearing veins and H2-bearing brine fluid inclusions.
Federico Pezzotta, Gaspare Maletto, Tiziano Bonisoli, and Giancarlo Piccoli, “Minéralogie des rodingites alpines: Formation, caractéristiques et divers faciès,” in Minéraux des Rodingites alpines (Italie-Suisse), Le Règne Minéral Hors Série 20, 2014 — Listed by Mindat among the references for Bellecombe; a broader Alpine rodingite treatment that includes the Italian-Swiss rodingite mineral context.
Antonio Miglioli, “Postscript: vesuvianite and hessonite from Le Banchette, Bellecombe, Aosta Valley, Italy,” The Mineralogical Record, 46(5), 2015, pp. 788–789 — A short locality-specific note listed in Mindat’s Bellecombe references, relevant to the Bellecombe/Banchette vesuvianite-hessonite association.
Franca Piera Caucia, Luigi Marinoni, Maurizio Scacchetti, Maria Pia Riccardi, and Omar Bartoli, “The Vesuvianite Gems of the Val d’Ala (Piedmont, Italy),” Minerals, 10(6), 535, 2020 — Focused on Val d’Ala, but useful for comparison because it discusses Italian Alpine vesuvianite in rodingites and explicitly notes Bellecombe as one of the important Aosta Valley sources of valuable vesuvianite samples.
Mindat locality page: Bellecombe, Châtillon, Aosta Valley, Italy — The central locality database record, with coordinates, mineral list, references, and links to specimen photos.
Mindat occurrence page: Vesuvianite from Bellecombe, Châtillon, Aosta Valley, Italy — Species-specific occurrence record for Bellecombe vesuvianite, including associated minerals based on photo data and locality quality rating.
Wikimedia Commons: Minerals of Bellecombe — Open image category with vesuvianite, grossular, diopside, and locality-related media from Bellecombe.
Wikimedia Commons: Vesuvianite-114159 — Wine-red Bellecombe vesuvianite specimen photographed by Rob Lavinsky, useful for seeing the reddish end of the locality’s color range.
Wikimedia Commons: Vesuvianite-220793 — Olive-green Bellecombe vesuvianite cluster from older collection material, illustrating the blocky, glassy style prized by collectors.
Mineral Auctions archive: Vesuvianite, ex Richard Kosnar Collection — Auction record for a Bellecombe miniature, useful for historical-market context and collector language around the locality.
Mineral Auctions archive: Vesuvianite, rare doubly terminated crystal — Auction record for a 1.6 cm doubly terminated Bellecombe crystal reportedly found in 1992, with bidding history.
Wendel Minerals: Bellecombe vesuvianite, item 2317 — Dealer listing for a high-end Bellecombe miniature with intergrown vesuvianite crystals, hessonite association, striation, and condition notes.
Minfind: Bellecombe vesuvianite search/listing context — Market aggregator page showing sold and related Bellecombe vesuvianite offerings from specialist dealers.
Mindat reference record: Novaga 1994 — Bibliographic record for the main Journal of Gemmology paper on Bellecombe and Montjovet vesuvianite.
