On line services
Press area
AEPI area
Partners area
Grenoble
A city at the meeting of two valleys
The valleys of the Gresse and Drac rivers converge just to the south of Grenoble, while the Grésivaudan valley, down which flows the Isère river, arrives from the northeast. All the rivers join downstream of the city and continue northwest towards Voreppe. The three glacier valleys form a Y-shaped pattern, hemmed in by the pre-Alpine ranges of Chartreuse and Vercors, to the north and west, and by the Belledonne range, to the east. The historic centre of Grenoble stands on the banks of the Isère, at the point at which it runs round the southern-most tip of Chartreuse. The Science Park is located at the meeting point of the Drac and the Isère, immediately recognizable by the ring of the Synchrotron. Upstream and east of the city, the university campus nestles in a bend in the Isère.
A wide range of leisure activities
There are 25 museums and major tourist attractions in Grenoble and the immediate vicinity, including the cable car up to the Bastille, with superb views over the city, two 18-hole golf courses, and a via ferrata in the middle of the town. Grenoble is an important venue for congressists, with two congress centres – Alpexpo-Alpes Congrès and Europole-Centre de Congrès – which hosted more than 3,410 professional events in 2005, attracting some 128,000 congressists.
Grenoble museum
Grenoble's art museum celebrated its 200th anniversary in 1998. It was founded in 1798 by Louis Joseph Jay and has always had a proactive acquisitions policy. Its initial collection, based on works seized during the revolutionary period, grew subsequently thanks to purchases, loans and donations. In 1890 Léonce Mesnard donated a large collection, leading to the start of a drawings section. In 1904 General de Beylié donated various works, including some by Zurbaran. In 1923 Mr and Mrs Agutte-Sembat, both keen collectors of modern art, contributed works by Signac, Matisse, Van Dongen and Rouault.
In the early years of the 20th century the museum benefited from intensive activity by the then curator Pierre Andry-Farcy, who was particularly interested in contemporary art and a talented poster-designer himself. By 1919 it had become France's top modern art museum, outside Paris, and by the end of the century it ranked as one of the most important in Europe. This explains to a large extent why the museum has acquired some highly innovative works, endowing it with an exceptional collection of modern art, featuring exhibits by Matisse, Picasso, Léger, Soutine, Vlaminck, Derain, Marquet and many others.
The focus of the museum's collection has shifted decisively towards modern art. It now enjoys the additional advantage of brand-new premises, opened in 1994, to display the collection in the best possible conditions.
More info
Literary and artistic tradition
Champollion (1790-1832)
Jean-François Champollion, who was born in Figeac in 1790, soon displayed a particular gift for learning oriental languages, studying Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac and Aramaic. During his first stay in Grenoble (1801-1806) he developed a taste for Egyptology working alongside the great mathematician Joseph Fourier, who had taken part in the French expedition to Egypt. Following the advice of a Syrian monk, he learned the Ethiopic and Coptic languages, realising they might prove useful for deciphering hieroglyphs. In 1807, aged 16, Champollion presented a dissertation to the Grenoble Academy claiming that Coptic was simply a later version of Ancient Egyptian.
After a short stay in Paris he returned to Grenoble in 1809 to take up an appointment as professor of ancient history at the recently founded faculty of letters. Building on the realisation that Egyptian hieroglyphs represented "alternatively ideas or the sounds of a language" he succeeded in deciphering an increasing number of signs, publishing his Précis du système hiéroglyphique in 1824.
Stendhal (Henri Beyle, 1783-1842)
Henri Beyle, better known under his nom de plume Stendhal, was born in the centre of Grenoble on 23 January 1783. In his subsequent writings he recalls his happy memories of the house of Dr Henri Gagnon, his maternal grandfather, which looked out over Place Grenette. The terrace at the back had a view over the Jardin de Ville. It was here that he developed intellectually and emotionally. He adopted the pseudonym of Stendhal when he published his first novels, borrowing the name from Stendal, a town in Prussia, west of Berlin and close to Brunswick, where the writer held an important position in the French occupation forces.
Serving as an officer in the dragoons then as a quartermaster in the army of Napoleon, Stendhal discovered Italy, which had a profound effect on him. He wrote some of the finest 19th century novels, in particular Le Rouge et le Noir (1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839). A posthumous autobiographical work, La Vie de Henry Brulard (1890), finally brought him the fame he deserved.
Photo: Stendhal in Rome in 1840, by Södermark. Versailles Museum.
Berlioz (1803-1869)
Hector Berlioz was born in La Côte Saint André, between Grenoble and Vienne. He earned recognition as a composer on account of the dramatic force of his works and the complexity of his orchestration. He occupies a special place in the history of music. Well ahead of his contemporaries, he was a most original composer, but also an innovator in the performance of music. He was a brilliant writer and critic too, though his literary work is sadly often overlooked. Few musicians achieved so much in as many different domains. His most famous works include La Symphonie fantastique (1830), Romeo and Juliet (1839), and the Damnation of Faust (1846).
Photo: Berlioz photographed by Karl Reutlinger.
Twentieth century
Come the 20th century Grenoble demonstrated its vitality and diversity with the musician Oliver Messiaen, thinker Emmanuel Mounier, publisher Benjamin Arthaud, poets Jean Pellerin, René Fernandat and Suzanne Renaud, and sculptor Gilioli, who lived here during the second world war. Contemporary creative work displays the same intensity and eclecticism, with a wide range of talents: writer Gilles Lipovetsky, sociologist Pierre Sansot, poet Jean-Pierre Chambon, theatre director Laurent Pelly, science-fiction writers Jean-Pierre Andrevon and Maurice Dantec, publisher Jacques Glénat, choreographer Jean-Claude Gallotta, painters Arcabas and Jean-Noël Zanetti, novelist Kateb Yacine… Grenoble is still producing plenty of creative artists.
A brief history
The beginnings of Grenoble probably coincided with the arrival of the Celts, around the 5th century BC, and the foundation of a minor settlement named Cularo. It was seized by the Romans in 121 BC, when the legions of Quintus Fabius Maximus defeated the Allobroges and Avernes forces.
In the 3rd century AD it changed its name to Gratianopolis, in tribute to the Roman emperor Gratian. For about 1,000 years the city remained within its Roman walls. Despite being the capital of the Dauphiné province, Grenoble only had a population of 2,000 souls in 1349, when its ruler Humbert II handed over his kingdom to the French crown. Close to the border with Savoy and Italy, Dauphiné was strategically important to the defence of France, which explains the many fortifications visible to this day.
On 7 June 1788 rioting broke out all over the town, with the population bombarding royal troops with tiles and stones, hence its subsequent name of La Journée des Tuiles. In an attempt to restore calm a meeting was organized at the town hall on 14 June, bringing together representatives of all members of society, nobles and commoners. The meeting demanded that the nation should take charge of its political future and called for another larger gathering. On 21 July local notables (mainly burghers, with a large proportion of lawyers) organized the Vizille Assembly, attended by 50 priests, 165 nobles and 276 representatives of the third estate. The assembly demanded a meeting of the Estates General (a form of national parliament) with the votes of individual representatives being counted, not just the views of the three estates. Opposition to absolutist monarchy finally came out into the open, with increasing support for its demands, culminating in the meeting of the Estates General which coincided with the start of the French Revolution in 1789.
The industrial revolution reached Grenoble in the 1840s. The first industrial activities to develop were:
- glove-making. In its heyday glove-making in Grenoble accounted for some 32,000 jobs – mostly working at home – producing 12 million pairs of gloves (sold by the dozen), most of which were exported. Even in those days Grenoble had strong international links!
- paper-making. The harnessing of hydraulic power encouraged the development of a large number of mill villages, along the left bank of the Grésivaudan valley, at the foot of the Belledonne range.
- cement manufacture. Exploitation of the limestone deposits of the Vercors and Chartreuse hills provided Louis Vicat with the raw materials he needed to develop a technique for manufacturing cement from 1842 onwards. In an early example of the fruitful association of university, research and industry, he was assisted by Emile Gueymard, a local geologist.
 |  |  |
From hydraulic power to information and communications technology
Aristide Bergès and hydraulic power
At the end of the 19th century industry in the Grenoble area took on a new lease of life with the harnessing of hydraulic power, associated in France with the name of Aristide Bergès. To use the driving force of the steep mountain streams was a technical prowess that required the development of suitable materials. A whole new branch of mechanical engineering prospered in Grenoble to produce penstocks, valves and turbines. Hydroelectric power was quick to follow. Large firms emerged: Neyrpic, manufacturing turbines (now part of Alstom), Merlin Gerin, producing electrical switchgear (now part of Schneider Electric), the Municipal Lighting and Energy Distribution Company (now Gaz Electricité de Grenoble), producing, supplying and distributing energy. The technical sophistication of the technology required to produce hydroelectric power led to close links between industry and science, for the training of future engineers and for research. Such exchanges sowed the seeds of a new departure, which began to take shape in Grenoble in the 1950s. At the same time other firms developed in food processing, building and garments.
Louis Néel
The second world war changed the face of Grenoble and its industry, with activities increasingly drawing on science, thanks to the visionary ideas of Louis Néel, who arrived in Grenoble in 1940. Néel brought new energy to research, shifting its focus to applied science. Perhaps the finest illustration of this trend was the start of Grenoble's Nuclear Research Centre, decided by France's Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in 1955 at the instigation of Néel. His commitment was also decisive in the location here of the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL), and more recently of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). Néel's own research into magnetism earned him the ultimate distinction of a Nobel prize for physics in 1970.
Thanks to Néel an internationally recognized centre for scientific research developed. Nowhere else can one find the conjunction of a powerful source of neutron radiation (ILL) and an equally powerful synchrotron (ESRF). Every year more than 8,000 scientists come from all over the world to use the facilities, further proof that science ignores borders. Several major discoveries have been made in Grenoble. To mention but a few examples, many research projects carried out at ILL have proved decisive, leading to two Nobel prizes, awarded to Rudolf Mössbauer in 1961 and more recently to Klaus von Klitzing, in 1985.
More info
Jean Kuntzmann
Another scientist of great importance to Grenoble is Jean Kuntzmann. He arrived here in 1945 to take up a position as a lecturer. A fine mathematician, he created and developed completely new fields of research and teaching in digital calculation and computer science, ending his career with the didactics of mathematics and computer science. Kuntzmann founded the Grenoble Institute of Applied Mathematics (IMAG), now an internationally reputed laboratory. He also worked hard to establish computer science as a scientific discipline in its own right. In 1960-70 the computer soft and hardware industry enjoyed strong development, building on the habit already formed in industry of turning to academics to solve problems of calculation.
With Grenoble's habit of research and industry working in close synergy, innovative fields such as physics at CNRS, electronics at CEA-Leti, and computer soft and hardware at INP Grenoble and IMAG, all the skills were available in one place to spark the development of a new industry in information and communications technology, illustrated by constant innovation in microelectronics and more recently the development of nanotechnology.