The most beautiful passes in the Alps: Col du Galibier and Col du Lautaret

There are roads that don't just connect two valleys, but two sides of a world. The route of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne à Briançon, Via Valloire, Galibier pass and Lautaret, is one of them. Following the bends of the mountain, you cross the layers of time, strata of geography, silences of historyA road where you touch the sky, while keeping your feet in the stone and your eyes on the traces of men.

From Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to the Galibier Pass

Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne: the blessing hand and the salt roads

This is at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, where this journey begins. The valley, which has been called since Roman times Mauritian valley - the Maurienne Valley –, is a natural corridor between the Northern Alps and Piedmont. Here, the mountain is not an obstacle, but a link, and the city, an anchor point in the great movement of men, ideas, goods.

Founded in the 6th century at the instigation of Saint Thecla, who brought there from Alexandria a precious relic – The Three Fingers of Saint John the Baptist, symbol of blessing and transmission – the city quickly became a important bishopric, radiating across the entire Haute Maurienne. To this founding legend is added a historical reality: For over a millennium, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne was a religious capital, a stronghold and an economic crossroads..

La Saint John the Baptist Cathedral, with its slender Romanesque bell tower, flanked by its 11th-century cloister with twisted columns, is the beating heart of the city. There you will discover Byzantine frescoes, a vaulted Gothic choir, and above all the Three Fingers Shrine, displayed in a side chapel. The blessing hand, represented on the city ​​coat of arms, symbolically watches over travelers. There we find the cenotaph of Humbert aux Blanches Mains, first Count of Maurienne and above all first member of the dynasty of the House of Savoy, which reigned over the Alps for almost a millennium.

Around the sanctuary, the streets of the historic center unfold a maze of medieval alleys, where one can guess, behind the sober facades, the bourgeois houses of the notables and canons, vaulted passages, door frames decorated with coats of arms. The names of the streets – Bishop's Street, rue du Collège, Priests Street – tell of the strong ecclesiastical and intellectual presence.

More Saint-Jean was not just a church town. She was also a nodal point on the salt road, this white gold which passed from the salt marshes of Moûtiers to Piedmont. This ancestral trade, taxed, monitored, protected, allowed the town to grow rich. Warehouses, muleteer relays, hospital convents marked the routes, and we still find, not far from the current station, the remains of buildings linked to this ancient activity.

From Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne to Valloire: the suspended route

The climb begins at Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, at the confluence of the Arc and the Valloirette, once a lively commercial stopover. And it is there, at the exit of the town, that the road of the passes begins. From the first bends, we feel that we are leaving a world of alpine village to enter a rarer, brighter, more suspended space. The wind rushes between the larches, and the peaks of the Alpine arc draw a horizon line that we will not leave until Briançon.

It is around a bend that the Telegraph Fort. Located on a promontory as sharp as a ship's prow, it commands the entire valley and guards access to the Galibier pass. It takes its name from the Chappe optical semaphore, put into service in 1807 to connect Lyon to Milan. The fort, built between 1885 and 1890, extended this mission: to observe, control, protect. Even today, its ascent offers you a 360 ° panorama, from Vanoise to Mont-Blanc, as far as Écrins in clear weather.

Higher up you reach Valloire, a village resort whose name evokes the valley of gold (aureus valley). Former temporary hospice in the Middle Ages, Valloire is today a lively town where the onion-domed bell tower of the Baroque church watches over the artisans, cheesemakers, and mountain farmers. You can stroll through the narrow streets, workshops, and small stone bridges. Along the torrent, paths lead towards the chapels of Poingt-Ravier, or climb to the hanging hamlets of Bonnenuit and ColIn winter, the road ends here. The ski slopes await you in Valloire.

The Galibier Pass: the pass of cycling epics

Beyond Bonnenuit, the road becomes myth. The Galibier passor a 2642 meters, is much more than a passage: it is a rite. Crossed for the first time by the Tour de France In 1911 he was remembered as the top of the peaks, the line where man joins the eagle.

The road, built at the end of the 19th century, was for a long time a feat of engineering. Before the tunnel was dug in 1890 (at 2556 m), convoys had to cross the ridges on the mountainside. Today, you can still use the old summit road, narrow and dizzying, which winds as close as possible to the sky, among moraines, eternal snowfields, gneiss and quartzite slabs.

At the top, the panorama is striking : to the north, the Vanoise glaciers; to the west, the Aiguilles d'Arves; to the south, the Écrins in their majesty. A stele pays homage to Henri Desgrange, father of the Tour de France, who saw in this pass the summit of Alpine effort and beauty.

This is where what Samivel called blows "the spirit of high solitudes"No sound, except that of the wind, of the seeping water, of the talking stones.

From Lautaret to Briançon: between alpine gardens and king's bastions

The descent to the Guisane Valley is softer, brighter. After a few hairpin bends facing the Meije, we slide towards the Lautaret pass (2058 m), exchange pass, historic crossroads of Dauphiné, between the Northern Alps (Isère) and the Southern Alps (Hautes Alpes), known since Antiquity.

The Lautaret Pass: a balcony overlooking the Écrins

À 2058 meters above sea level, Lautaret pass is one of the oldest and most emblematic crossing points in the Alps. It is also one of the few French Alpine passes kept open in winter. Already frequented in Roman times, then redeveloped under Napoleon I and modernized in the 19th century, it naturally connects the Romanche Valley to that of the GuisaneIts gentle profile, with its curvature almost soothed after the vertigo of the Galibier, made it a exchange pass, more than conflict. Salt, wood, wine, animals... and news of the world were passed through it.

The Lautaret offers a unique geographical location, at the crossroads of Northern alps and Southern Alps, under the high protection of the Meije massif (3983 m), whose silhouette of granite and snow, often draped in clouds, dominates the scene like a set from an ancient tragedy. Facing her, flowing from the summit of the Meije, the glaciers of L'Homme and Lautaret still sparkle, threatened but proud sentinels. The contrast between the flowery slopes of the collar and the dizzying minerality from the slope of La Grave adds to the natural drama of the place.

It's this exceptional biological and climatic richness which justifies the presence here, since 1899, of the Lautaret Alpine Botanical Garden, founded by the University of Grenoble. This high mountain garden, perched at over 2000 meters, is a living laboratory where more than 2000 Alpine, Himalayan, Caucasian or Andean species coexist on a grassy carpet. Between saxifrages, edelweiss, gentians and rhododendrons, the botanical trails are an invitation to contemplation as much as to study.

Around the garden, many trails soar towards the ridges, the hanging valleys or the high-altitude lakes. A beautiful hike takes the more athletic to the Chamoissière refuge at Plan de l'Alpe, towards the sources of the Romanche. In summer, shepherds and botanists meet hikers, cyclists, geologists, each finding something at Lautaret its rising pattern.

The pass also accommodates a scientific observatory, coupled with a research station on climate, glaciers and high-altitude ecosystems. Here, the wind that sweeps the rocky spurs carries more than dust: it carries the awareness of a fragile world, to be preserved.

The Guisane Valley: the villages of Serre Chevalier

Since Lautaret pass, the road opens towards the south, in a movement of deliverance and light. Here begins the valley of the Guisane, soft and bright, bordered by high meadows, wooded greenhouses and perched villages which punctuate the descent with the regularity of a pastoral rosary. The clear water of the Guisane, fast and singing, draws a thread of freshness in this landscape open to the Écrins, where the Meije massif, still visible in places, continues to dominate the horizon like a mineral god.

The descent is a gradient of altitudes and stylesThe geological harshness of the Lautaret quickly gives way to the roundness of the mountain pastures, then to the first signs of human occupation. We enter a land of glades, isolated chapels, roofs of slate and blond stone, where each village seems suspended in a precise light, chiseled by the high altitude air.

The first important town is Le monêtier-les-bains, known since Antiquity for its sulfurous hot springs, already exploited by the Romans. Even today, the hot waters spring up at nearly 44°C, and their steam, on cold mornings, dresses the streets in a dreamlike cloakThe village has preserved a remarkable religious heritage: theChurch of St. Peter, flanked by a Lombard bell tower, but also numerous rural chapels and oratories scattered throughout the hamlets. The thermal past is combined with the tradition of transhumance, still very much alive, which brings the herds up through the Lauzet and Casset chalets.

Further down, The Salle les Alpes et St. Chaffrey offer peaceful stops, at the foot of the Prorel ridgesThese are villages of character, crossed by old mule tracks, lined with sculpted fountains, small stone bridges and houses with galleries, characteristics of Briançon architecture. History emerges in every detail: lintels engraved with ancient dates, sundials, restored barns, wayside crosses with familiar silhouettes.

Throughout the descent, the gaze is constantly called by the summits : to the west, the summit of La Condamine, to the east, the wooded slopes of the Grand Aréa, and, in the background, the first fortified bastions of Briançon, announcing the end of the journey.

These three villages, together with Briançon, form the resort of Serre Chevalier, named after a peak overlooking the Guisane Valley. The ski area's 250 km of slopes are spread out over the western slope (the right bank) of the Guisane River, and from the top of the slopes you can enjoy a magnificent landscape.

Briançon: the upper town, at the gates of heaven

As the valley narrows, signs of the military past are multiplyingThe forts, the bastions, the redoubts stand out on the heights like sentinels from another timeBriançon finally appears, embedded in its rocky cirque, surrounded by ramparts and silenceFrom afar, we can already see the squat chimneys, tight roofs, steep slopes of the old town, like an island in the sky.

Located at an altitude of 1326 meters, Briançon is the highest city in France. But beyond the statistics, it is a city reaching towards the sky, clinging to the slope, fortified against the world, and yet open to all influences. Here ends the journey that began in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne; and yet, everything still seems to be beginning. For Briançon is a threshold: between France and Italy, between the Northern Alps and the Southern Alps, between history and the future.

As soon as you approach, you can see the defensive engineering who shaped this city. Vauban, at the end of the 17th century, displayed all his art there: bastioned enclosures, Asfeld Bridge, Fort of the Heads, communication Y, Randouillet fort…an exceptional military network, designed to protect the kingdom against assaults from Piedmont. These fortifications, today listed in the Unesco World Heritage, tell the engineers' war, the one who shapes the mountains without betraying them.

But Briançon is not just about its ramparts. upper town, enclosed within its walls, is a jewel of mountain urbanism. Its narrow and steep streets, sometimes covered, paved with large slabs, come alive around the Place d'Armes, from the Schappe park, or of the collegiate church of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas, with two unequal towers. The Gargoyles, these small canals which run through the streets to channel the melt water, give the city a fluid and continuous rhythm, like a memory of a tamed torrent.

Here, each stone seems to have a nameThe pastel-colored facades tell of nearby Italy, the forged balconies evoke iron craftsmen, the sundials painted on the walls show a vertical, solar, austere time. And when you climb up to the upper ramparts, the view opens up: below, the Durance, in the distance, the Clarée, and around, the Prorel state forest, slopes of Chenaillet, Janus border ridges.

A military town, certainly, but also city of water and health : from the 19th century, Briançon became a popular health resort, renowned for the purity of its air, recommended for tuberculosis sufferers and convalescents. This thermal past has left a few villas, an air of discreet resort, and a welcome form of slowness in a world always on the move.

De Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in Briançon, crossing the passes of the Galibier and Lautaret, you have gone back in time as much as the slope. You have followed torrents, penetrated hanging valleys, brushed against bastions, and greeted the patron saints of the passes. This journey is not a simple crossing: it is a geography lesson embodied, a reading stones, a poetry of altitude.

Briançon, like a high-perched end point, is not an outcome, but a promise: the one that Every mountain road leads somewhere—to others, to oneself, or to the sky.

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