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Grenoble is encircled by mountains in a way that no other European city quite matches. The Belledonne range to the east, the Chartreuse to the north, and the Vercors plateau to the west create a natural amphitheater that makes the sky above the city dramatic at almost any hour. Stendhal was born here in 1783 (as Henri Beyle, before he adopted the pen name) and spent his adult life feeling vaguely superior about Grenoble while writing nostalgically about it in his memoirs. The house where he was born on Rue Hector Berlioz is now a museum.

The city has the highest concentration of particle physicists and nuclear research facilities outside Geneva, owing to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) on the outskirts of town, and the Institut Laue-Langevin neutron research center nearby.

This gives Grenoble a particular energy: the cafes on Place Saint-Andre and around the university fill with people discussing things most cities don't discuss over lunch. The Bastille fortress, reachable by cable car (telepherique des Bulles, the bubble cars) from the Quai Stephane Jay, hangs above the city at 476 meters and offers a view over the whole Isere valley that justifies the trip alone.