France has more skiable terrain than any other country, and the linked domains in the Tarentaise and Espace Killy are the largest anywhere. But the mountains are not only a winter product: the same lifts carry walkers and bikers in summer, the Tour de France has made the Alpine and Pyrenean cols into destinations in their own right, and the quieter ranges — the Jura, the Vosges, the Écrins, the Queyras — never had the resort boom at all.
Start here
If you only do mountains once in France.
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Mont Blanc 4,806 m — the highest mountain in western Europe -
Aiguille du Midi 2,800 vertical metres in twenty minutes, to a terrace at 3,842 m -
Cirque de Gavarnie A 1,500 m rock amphitheatre with Europe's tallest waterfall down one wall -
Les Trois Vallées Around 600 km of linked piste on one pass — the biggest in the world -
Écrins National Park Glaciers and 4,000 m peaks with no ski lifts on them at all -
Route des Crêtes 77 km of ridge road, built by the army in 1915 to supply the front
Region by region
Grand Est
Champagne cellars, the Alsace wine road and Strasbourg's Christmas markets
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Gérardmer The Vosges' lake resort — sailing in summer, skiing in winter - The Vosges Rounded granite summits, high lakes and the ridge road along the old front line
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Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg A red sandstone fortress at 750 m with the whole Rhine plain below -
Hartmannswillerkopf A Vosges summit fought over all of 1915, and a national monument
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
The world's most valuable vineyards, Romanesque abbeys and the Jura's quiet mountains
Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Bordeaux and its vineyards, the Dordogne's prehistory, and Europe's tallest dune
Occitanie
Carcassonne and the Cathar castles, the Canal du Midi, the Pyrenees and the Camargue's edge
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Mont Blanc, the world's largest linked ski areas, Lyon's kitchens and a chain of volcanoes
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Annecy Canals, a lake often called the cleanest in Europe, and mountains behind -
Chamonix Directly beneath Mont Blanc — the town that invented alpinism -
Grenoble A flat city with three mountain ranges starting at the ring road -
Aix-les-Bains Thermal baths on the shore of France's largest natural lake -
Chambéry The old Savoyard capital, and the doorway to the Tarentaise -
Évian-les-Bains Belle Époque lakeside, and the water everyone has drunk -
Megève A working village that the Rothschilds turned into a ski resort - Alps & Mont Blanc Western Europe's highest mountain and the largest linked ski areas on earth
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Auvergne & the Volcanoes Eighty volcanoes in a line down the Massif Central, and the spa towns beneath them -
Mer de Glace France's longest glacier, reached by a rack railway from 1908 -
Puy de Dôme 1,465 m of lava dome with a rack railway and a Roman temple on top -
Chaîne des Puys Eighty volcanoes in a line 32 km long, UNESCO-listed since 2018 -
The Vercors A limestone fortress of a plateau, and a Resistance stronghold in 1944 -
Tignes–Val d'Isère L'Espace Killy — glacier skiing that runs into June
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Lavender and Roman arenas inland, the Riviera on the coast, and the Alps behind both
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Briançon The highest town in France, walled by Vauban at 1,326 m - The Southern Alps The Verdon gorge, the Écrins, and 300 days of sun on the sunny side of the Alps
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Gorges du Verdon 700 m deep and turquoise, from glacial rock flour in the water -
Mont Ventoux 1,910 m of bare limestone — the Tour's hardest climb, and windiest
Corsica
A mountain in the sea — 1,000 km of coast, the GR20, and a language of its own
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Corte Corsica's mountain capital, and the mouth of the Restonica -
The GR20 180 km across Corsica's spine — often called Europe's hardest waymarked trek -
The Restonica Valley Glacial lakes above Corte, up a road that concentrates the mind -
Aiguilles de Bavella Seven red granite needles over a pass on the GR20
Guadeloupe
A butterfly-shaped Caribbean archipelago — rainforest on one wing, dry coast on the other
Martinique
The flower island — Mount Pelée, black-sand north, white-sand south and agricole rum
Réunion
An Indian Ocean volcano with three collapsed craters, and 1,000 km of walking trails
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Cilaos A village inside a collapsed crater, up 400 hairpin bends -
Piton de la Fournaise One of the most active volcanoes on earth — and it erupts most years -
Cirque de Mafate A collapsed crater with no road at all — supplied by helicopter and footpath -
Cirque de Cilaos Up 400 hairpins to a caldera village, thermal springs and lentils -
Cirque de Salazie The wettest and greenest of the three cirques, with Hell-Bourg in it -
Piton des Neiges 3,070 m — the highest point in the Indian Ocean, climbed for sunrise
Mayotte
One of the world's largest lagoons, humpback whales, and a double coral barrier
Other kinds of place
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Coast & beaches Three seas and an ocean — around 5,800 km of mainland coast, and far more overseas -
Cities Paris, and eleven more cities that would headline any other country -
Villages & countryside The 180-odd villages on the official 'most beautiful in France' list -
National & regional parks Eleven national parks and 58 regional ones — about a fifth of the country