Tourist information -
Grenoble
Beautifully situated on the Drac and Isère
rivers, and surrounded by mountains, Grenoble is a lively, thriving,
modern city, home to a university of more than 35,000 students.
The city's prosperity was originally founded on glove-making, but
in the nineteenth century its economy diversified to include mining,
cement, paper mills, hydroelectric power ("white coal",
as they called it) and metallurgy. Today, it is a centre of chemical
and electronics industries and nuclear research, with the big, new
laboratories of the Atomic Energy Commission on the banks of the
Drac.
Grenoble has also been at the forefront of social,
environmental and cultural innovation, particularly during the twenty-year
mayoralty of Hubert Dubedout, who was killed in a climbing accident
in 1986. His Villeneuve housing project (between avenue Jean-Jaurès
and cours de la Libération), though tatty and of ill repute
today, started out as an idealistic attempt to provide integrated
living space for a complete mix of social classes, including Arab
and other immigrant workers, together with open schooling and other
community-based programmes. The current mayor, previously Chirac's
environment minister, has revived one of Dubedout's ideas in the
construction of the city's pride and joy, its pollution-free tram
network.
The best way to start your stay is to take the
téléférique (Jan to mid-March & Nov-Dec
daily 11am-6.30pm; mid-March to May & Oct Mon 11am-7.30pm, Tues-Sat
9.45am-midnight, Sun 9.15am-7.30pm; June & Sept Mon 11am-midnight,
Tues-Sat 9.15am-midnight, Sun 9.15am-7.30pm; July & Aug Mon
11am-12.30am, Tues-Sun 9.15am-12.30am; 35F/?5.34 single) from the
riverside quai Stéphane-Jay to Fort de la Bastille on the
steep slopes above the north bank of the Isère. The ride
is hair-raising, as you are whisked steeply and swiftly into the
air in a sort of transparent egg, which allows you to see very clearly
how far you would fall in the event of an accident. If you don't
like the sound of the cable car, you can climb the pleasant but
steep footpath from the St-Laurent church.
Although the fort is of little interest, the view is fantastic.
At your feet the Isère, milky-grey and swollen with snow-melt,
tears at the piles of the old bridges which join the St-Laurent
quarter, colonized by Italian immigrants in the nineteenth century,
to the nucleus of the medieval town, whose red roofs cluster tightly
around the church of St-André. To the east, snowfields gleam
in the gullies of the Belledonne massif (2978m). Southeast is Taillefer
and south-southeast the dip where the Route Napoléon passes
over the mountains to Sisteron and the Mediterranean - this is the
road Napoléon took after his escape from Elba in March 1815
on his way to rally his forces for the campaign that led to his
final defeat at Waterloo. To the west are the steep white cliffs
of the Vercors massif; the highest peak, dominating the city, is
Moucherotte (1901m). The jagged peaks at your back are the outworks
of the Chartreuse massif. Northeast on a clear day you can see the
white peaks of Mont Blanc up the deep glacial valley of the Isère,
known as La Grésivaudan. It was in this valley that the first
French hydroelectric project went into action in 1869. Heading back
into town, there's a pleasant path down through the public gardens.
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