Offering refuge from the snow since the Middle Ages, and the scene of fierce combat in 1940 and 1944-45, the Col du Petit-Saint-Bernard has always been a strategic location. Today, ruins and traces of the devastation caused to the hospice buildings hark back to this tumultuous past. On the slopes of the pass, to the right of the massive Lancebranlette mountain, there is a great view of the steep Italian face of Mont Blanc. The Chanousia Alpine Garden has about a thousand plant species.