Grenoble

This Month in Grenoble (March):

Shopping: The perfect old-fashioned sweetshop, A l'Abaille d'Or is filled to the brim with more than 50 kinds of sweets, chocolates, gingerbreads and honey made with pine, acacia and mountain flowers (3 Rue de Strasbourg, tel: 04 7643 0403).

Sightseeing: Since 1973, the Grenoble Jazz Festival (16 March-3 April) has been bringing young and renowned musicians, and the best of European jazz, to over 17,000 spectators. Warm up your jazz hands at more than 25 public venues around the city (jazzgrenoble.com).

Key areas: Grenoble's university campus is something of an architectural mecca. Dodge skaters while wandering across the diagonal chessboard paving, past zig-zag walls and brutalist buildings, then catch your breath at one of the many nearby student cafés.

Day trips: An hour south-west of Grenoble lie the pre-historic caves of Chorange, where the temperature is a constant 10ºC and stalactites dangle like metre-long needles. A new light-and-sound show explains the evolution of creatures that lived here (grottes-de-choranche.com).

Grenoble News & Gossip

Grenoble Andros Trophy for ice racing

18-19 DEC
Grenoble

The fast, the furious and the slightly unhinged return to take part in the 20th edition of the prestigious ice racing cup this month. Bubbling with après-ski glamour and brimming with big-name talent - legendary Formula One driver Alain Prost is a past winner - this multi-discipline (cars, bikes and buggies) race has been running since 1990 and consists of seven heats across the mountain resorts of the French Alps and Andorra. This heat, taking place at the Alpe d'Huez resort near Grenoble, is the third in the series and features one of the most exciting tracks. Creating conditions that would see a normal race abandoned, officials ensure the track is sprayed heavily with water to ensure an even coating of ice. It all makes for an absorbing spectator event that's probably best enjoyed from behind a huge pine tree. www.tropheeandros.com

Grenoble Trivia

• March: Since 1951, a Grenoble law has existed that requires all new academic buildings in the city to donate 1% of their construction budget to cultural, artistic and sculptural works.

• February: Grenoble's 1968 Winter Olympics were the first to be televised in colour, the first to test gender and drugs, and the first in which East and West Germany entered separate teams.

• January: Created 200 years ago, the Musée de Grenoble is France's second-largest museum of modern art and one of the most important in Europe.

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