Where the French Alps reach their highest — ski from November to May
Val d'Isère is one of the most prestigious ski resorts in the world, set at 1,850 metres in the Tarentaise Valley and connected with Tignes to form the Espace Killy — named for local legend Jean-Claude Killy, triple Olympic gold medallist in 1968. The combined ski area covers 300 kilometres of pistes, reaching 3,456 metres on the Grande Motte glacier where skiing is possible year-round. The resort hosted the 1992 Winter Olympics downhill events and the Val d'Isère World Cup remains the season opener each December. The village retains genuine Savoyard character with stone-and-wood architecture…
Val d'Isère was a small Savoyard farming village until the 1930s when the first ski lifts were installed. Jean-Claude Killy was born in the village in 1943 and his 1968 triple gold at Grenoble made Val d'Isère world-famous. The 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics held their men's downhill events on the Face de Bellevarde, a run still considered one of the most challenging in the World Cup circuit. The nearby Col de l'Iseran (2,770m), the highest paved mountain pass in the Alps, is a summer cycling classic — it featured in the 2019 Tour de France on the stage where a landslide caused the race to…