Grenoble
— a city the mountains lean down into.
Not only on a wall.
“A flat-bottomed alpine city where the Drac meets the Isère, ringed on three sides by the Chartreuse, the Vercors, and the Belledonne. The Bastille fort sits 264 metres above the old town, reached since 1934 by the small bubble cable cars the locals call Les Bulles. Snow holds on the eastern ridges into June. The walnut groves down the valley have their own appellation.
Grenoble, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Grenoble sits in a wide alpine basin in southeastern France, at the confluence of the Drac and Isère rivers, where three ranges meet: the Chartreuse to the north, the Vercors to the west, the Belledonne to the east. The city holds about 158,000 residents within the commune and over half a million in the wider metropolitan area, making it the largest urban centre in the French Alps. It is the prefecture of the Isère department and seat of the Université Grenoble Alpes, founded in 1339.
The valley floor sits at about 215 metres, but the ridges around it climb past 2,900 metres in the Belledonne. The Bastille fort, perched on the lower slopes of the Chartreuse, stands 264 metres above the old town and is reached since 1934 by the small spherical cable cars the locals call Les Bulles. The basin shape traps cold air in winter and afternoon haze in summer; the clearest days come after the mistral pulls dry air down the Rhône and lifts the valley clean.
The bubble lift runs from Quai Stéphane Jay on the right bank of the Isère up to the Bastille several times an hour, with reduced service in November. The old town centres on Place Grenette and Place Saint-André, with the 13th-century church of Saint-André and the Renaissance Palais du Parlement nearby. The Musée de Grenoble, founded in 1798, holds one of the strongest collections of European painting outside Paris. The city hosted the 1968 Winter Olympics, and several venues at Chamrousse and Autrans remain in use.