EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

CHAMBÉRY , 55km north of Grenoble, lies just south of the Lac du Bourget in a valley separating the Chartreuse Massif from the Bauges mountains, historically an important strategic position commanding the entrance to the big Alpine valleys leading to the passes into Italy. The present town grew up around the château built by Count Thomas of Savoie in 1232, when Chambéry became capital of the ancient province, and flourished particularly in the fourteenth century. Although superseded as capital by Turin in 1563, it remained an important commercial and cultural centre and the emotional focus of all French Savoyards: "the winter residence of almost all the nobility of Savoy", Arthur Young reported in 1789, before its mid-nineteenth-century incorporation into France. Today, however, Chambéry is a provincial town offering a couple of fairly good sights but otherwise little excitement.