To Paul Guichonnet, historian and geographer: a friend beyond the Alps

Paul Guichonnet (1920-2018), a Savoyard historian and geographer who passed away at the age of 98 after finishing his last scientific paper, is mainly remembered for the long and fruitful collaboration with Centro Studi Piemontesi, as testified by Renzo Gandolfo's writings since 1983. His ideal interlocutor on this side of the Alps was the Turin colleague Carlo Pischedda, an expert of the Italian Risorgimento and a careful examiner of the facts and men and women of history. They exchanged productive considerations and interpretations, which were rigorously based on the archival documents on the events shared by Piedmont and Savoy and on the painful separation after the transalpine region was assigned to France under Napoleon III. Guichonnet's historiographical production is very large: some of his most significant works on the Alpine history and geography are reviewed in the journal "Studi Piemontesi", which also contains some of his extremely enjoyable essays. Guichonnet, one of the members of Institut de France, was awarded several honours in France and abroad for his cultural merits and civic commitment and is still remembered for his kind smile, that of a good, witty and thoughtful person, who was wise and simple and managed to keep track of history until the end.