A Guide to Grenoble, a Diamond in the Alps

The Musée de Grenoble is one of the most impressive art museums in all of Europe, and perhaps the continent’s most underrated. Founded in 1798 as the first provincial museum in the country, the museum’s current site is a sleek glass and steel structure inaugurated in 1994, whose windows allows stunning panoramas of the surrounding mountains to compliment the museum’s comprehensive collections and whose body seemingly melts into the greys and whites of the Alpine giants that loom around it.

The museum’s main attraction is its woven summary of Western painting since the 1200s culminating in its world-beating contemporary art collection. It is a reliquary of unexpected gems: in the pre-contemporary collections, expect to stumble upon works by Veronese, Régnier, Rubens, van Dyck, Guardi, Delacroix, Ingres, Gauguin, and Renoir, each placed into fascinating chronological context by the masterful curation of these winding hallway galleries. Then, explode into the more open-space contemporary collection which summarises almost every great art movement of the twentieth century between its walls. It holds one of the oldest contemporary art collections in the world and offers works by, to name just a few, Matisse, Chagall, Picasso, Monet, Magritte, Miró, Rodin, Ernst, Modigilani, and Warhole. Othon Friesz’s La Guerre (1915) is a particularly impressive (but particularly underrated) part of the collection.

Les Buelles (or, the Bubbles) is the affectionate local name for the cable cars that run from the left bank of the Isère up to the Bastille, the oldest urban cable car system in Europe. Originally built in 1934, the cars’ modern spherical design (from which they get their nickname) emerged from a 1976 renovation to revitalise the ageing attraction. Les Buelles now hoist over 300,000 visitors up over the Isère and 263m into the mountain-side each year for stunning panoramic views of Grenoble - including the 8km-long Cours Jean Jaurès that bisects the city - and the Vercors mountains behind them.

The topic of Les Buelles naturally leads us to that of the Bastille, the cable cars’ dizzying terminus. Protruding from the Chartreuse mountains and culminating at a dizzying height of 476m above sea level, the Bastille fortress dates back to the sixteenth century during the French Wars of Religion, when it was built over the ancient city walls to provide the city with protection from potential attackers. The majority of the Bastille in its current form, however, was built in the nineteenth century under the purview of General Haxo in order to consolidate Grenoble as a French defence against the bordering Kingdom of Sardinia.

The site is now the city’s biggest tourist site, and not only for the stunning views it offers, of which Stendhal once wrote: “I haven’t the strength to describe the admirable view, which changes every hundred steps.” As well as allowing visitors to explore the walls of the former fortress, the Bastille contains a small but worth-while military museum and offers tours of the Mandrin Caves, a network of underground passages below the fortress.

To discover more of Grenoble’s history, it is often enough just to trace the cobbled roads that meander through the Old Town, home to a kaleidoscope of different architectural styles that span the city’s entire 2,000-year history. For more detailed insights, Grenoble is home to some fifteen museums that cover almost every era of the city’s past:

The Musée archéologique de Grenoble stands at the foot of the Bastille and, since 1843, has occupied the Romanesque Church of Saint Laurent, itself constructed over an ancient Gallo-Roman necropolis built in the sixth century. The museum features glass walkways that allow visitors to look right into the crypt, where various artefacts have been re-placed where they were original excavated to create an authentic architectural experience.

The Musée dauphinois is located in the site of a former convent of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary and, as well as giving visitors privy access to this gorgeous buildings - the highlight being the astounding baroque Chapel of Sainte-Marie d’en-Haut - and its stunning grounds, provides an encyclopedic overview of the history, customs, culture, and traditions.

Last but certainly not least, we recommend the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation for a sobering but necessary insight into a dark side of France’s recent history - the collaborationist Vichy regime. Containing some 5,000 objects related to life in Grenoble during the Second World War, it both celebrates the heroic efforts of those who resisted and attempted to overthrow the Vichy government and remembers those who were persecuted by it, including the over one-thousand Jews and other minorities who were deported out of the region.

It would be a shame to visit Grenoble and not to explore its truly gorgeous surroundings. Around 40km from Grenoble is Lac Achard, a mountain-top lake that disappears under layers of ice and snow in the winter but metamorphosises in the summer into a beautiful glacier-carved landscape in the summer, resplendent with pine trees that dance in the Alpine breeze, rolling green pastures, and perfect crystal waters.

The Vercors drôme offers 3,000km of marked paths through rugged mountainscapes to offer total immersion into the decadent landscapes that give the Dauphiné region its unique natural skyline.

Or, some thirty minutes out of Grenoble is the Château de Vizille, originally built in the 14th century as a seat of the French crown. The castle, which now holds a museum dedicated to the French Revolution, is also located on 320 acres of scenic garden, home to a range of flora, tranquil rivers, and flocks of deer!

If there’s one thing that the Alps are famous for, it’s skiing. And Grenoble is one of the best home camps for winter sports enthusiasts, having been host to the 1968 Winter Olympics, in which France placed third, and being nearby to several famous ski stations and resorts. Les 7 Laux is some 45km northeast of the city and offers 120km of recently refurbished ski slopes across three different resorts, a variety of activities (including dog-sledding and paragliding!), and a wellness spa to relax in after a long day outdoors. Meanwhile, Autrans in the Vercors Massif offers 160km of trail through which to indulge in some cross-country skiing. There’s plenty to choose from!