The Latin name of the place was Stipulae, straw, indicating the straw left on the ground after the wheat harvest. Someone defined it as an open air museum and until the sixties, it was possible to admire in the hamlets of Étroubles undulating expanses of wheat and rye, dotted with the red of poppies and the blue of cornflowers. The term "Étroubles" may derive from the Valdostan patois (a French-Provençal dialect) etrobla, which means "fields covered with straw".
Situated at an altitude of 1270 meters, Etroubles was already known at the time of the Romans with the name of Restopolis, because it is located on the transit way to the Colle del Gran San Bernardo, a route along which, in later times, also the Via Francigena developed, the road that in the Middle Ages connected the British Isles to Rome and Jerusalem.
The most famous passage, in these centuries, was that of the Napoleonic army in May of 1800.
In the Middle Ages there was a square tower in the hamlet of Vachéry, built in the 12th century on probable Roman foundations, a church with a Romanesque bell tower dating back to 1400 and a hospice, founded in 1317 and still functioning in the 19th century.
The medieval village deserves a special attention, now an open air museum with the opening of the exhibition "À Étroubles, avant toi sont passés…"This is a permanent art gallery with the works of world-famous artists where you can spend a few hours freely among the old cobblestone streets, discovering the beautiful fountains from which fresh water gushes from Mont Vélan, the old houses recently renovated in local stone with slate roofs, the enormous fifteenth-century bell tower from which the hours strike and the nineteenth-century church with its splendid frescoes.
Numerous the festivals and the folkloristic manifestations that attract tourists also from the near Switzerland; among all we remember the famous Carnival of the Coumba Freide and the traditional summer Veillà.
In winter there is an articulated track for cross-country skiing of over 18 kilometers.
