Val d'Isère Ski Resort - France Travel Guide

Val d'Isère Ski Resort - France Travel Guide

Ski  

Val d'Isère ski resort is a traditional French Alpine village with centuries of history and beautiful stone chalets, which contrasts starkly with neighbouring Tignes' purpose-built apartment blocks. Skiing began here in the 1930s, but really took off after WWII.

Today Val d'Isère is a lively resort, with busy shops, restaurants and a buzzing nightlife. The resort centre has been extensively redeveloped in recent years and is now largely pedestrianised. It is especially popular with the British and Scandinavian ski crowd.

Val d'Isère ski resort is also a leading competition venue. It held several events during the 1992 Winter Olympics and most recently the 2009 Alpine World Ski Championships. Staging these two events, along with regular World Cup competitions, place it in an elite group of five resorts worldwide that have staged all three levels of world-class international competition.

Together with Tignes, it forms part of the 10,000-hectare (25,000-acre) Espace Killy ski area, home to some of France's best on- and off-piste terrain and one of the world’s biggest lift-served verticals.

Location:

Val d'Isère is located in the southeastern French region of Savoie in the Western Alps, close to the Italian border.

Serre Chevalier Ski Resort - France Travel Guide

Serre Chevalier Ski Resort - France Travel Guide

Ski  

Serre Chevalier is a friendly, good-value resort with a fine range of pistes to suit any skier or boarder. A strong point is the tree cover (a rarity in the French Alps), which ensures potentially good skiing even in poor weather, while the open slopes and bowls are great fun during the resort's more common sunny periods.

The nightlife in Serre Chevalier ski resort is rather low key, and the mix of rustic and modern ambience in the various villages is somewhat offset by heavy traffic along what is the main Grenoble-Briançon road.

Serre Chevalier is located close to the Italian border in the glaciated upper Durance Valley of the Southern French Alps, on the boundary of the Parc des Écrins, which is within the Écrins Massif – the highest mountain range entirely within France.