French Alps

The French Alps are where the country stops being gentle. Mont Blanc, western Europe’s highest peak, anchors a landscape of glaciers, turquoise lakes, and larch forests that feels closer to a different continent than to the vineyards two hours away. This is the France of cable cars and cheese fondue, of mountain refuges and lake towns that spend the winter under snow and the summer reflecting it from above.

Chamonix, at the foot of Mont Blanc, is the birthplace of alpinism and still the region’s beating heart — the Aiguille du Midi cable car climbs to nearly 3,800 metres in a matter of minutes, depositing you on a platform with a view across the entire massif into Italy and Switzerland. Annecy, built around a glacial lake so clear it looks retouched, pairs canal-laced old streets with some of the cleanest water in Europe, while the remote high-altitude village of Bonneval-sur-Arc, with its lauze-stone roofs, sits close enough to the Italian border to feel like the edge of the map. At the foot of the range, Lyon brings the food capital of France to the gateway of the Alps — a city built on the confluence of two rivers and a culinary tradition of bouchons and silk-weaving history that rivals Paris without ever raising its voice about it.

When to go: July and August for high-altitude hiking and lake swimming; December through March for skiing at altitude. Shoulder seasons bring mud and closed lifts — check conditions before planning around the mountains directly.