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.