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 Although superseded as capital by Turin in 1563, it remained an important commercial and cultural centre and the emotional focus of all French Savoyards: "the winter residence of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.
The Town
Halfway down the broad, leafy boulevard de la Colonne is the splendidly extravagant Fontaine des Éléphants , an elaborate homage to himself by the Comte de Boigne, a native son who made a fortune in the French East India Company in the eighteenth century. Just south of this on square de Lannoy-de-Bissy is the Musée Savoisien (daily except Tues 10am-noon & 2-6pm; 20F/?3.05), which records the lost rural life of the Savoyard mountain communities. On the first floor are some very lovely paintings by Savoyard primitives and painted wood statues from various churches in the region; up above are tools, carts, hay-sledges, old photos, and some very fine furniture from a house in Bessans, including a fascinating kitchen range made of wood and lined with lauzes (slabs of schist).
Next to the museum, in the enclosed little place Métropole, the cathedral has a handsome, though much restored, Flamboyant facade. The inside is painted in elaborate nineteenth-century trompe l'?il , imitating the twisting shapes and whorls of the high Gothic style. The cathedral's treasury (May-Aug daily 3-6pm; free) is worth a look for a very early ivory diptych and a thirteenth-century pyx (a case for holding the Eucharist).
A passage leads from the square to rue de la Croix-d'Or , with numerous restaurants and the Italianate Théâtre Charles Dullin , named after the avant-garde director who was born in the region. To the right, there's the long, rectangular place St-Léger , with a fountain and more cafés, where street musicians and players perform on summer evenings. Rousseau and Mme de Warens lived here in 1735, and also had a country cottage, Les Charmettes, just 2km south of the town on the rustic chemin des Charmettes. It's now the Musée Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Wed-Sun: July & Aug 10am-noon & 2-6pm; rest of year 10am-noon & 2-4.30pm; 20F/?3.05), containing personal possessions of the famous philosopher.
Towards the northern end of the square, the town's smartest street, rue de Boigne , to the right, leads back to the Fontaine des Éléphants. But if you continue past this intersection, on the left, a narrow medieval lane, rue Basse-du-Château, brings you out beneath the elegant apse of the Ste-Chapelle , the castle chapel, whose lancet windows and star vaulting are in the same late Gothic style as the cathedral. It was built to house the Holy Shroud, that much-venerated and today highly controversial piece of linen brought back from the Crusades and reputed to bear the image of the dead Christ. The dukes took the original with them to Turin but a replica remains on display here. The chapel contains the biggest carillon in Europe, a 70-bell monster which you can hear in action on Saturdays at 10.30am and 6pm. To get into the chapel head left to the entrance of the Château des Ducs de Savoie (daily guided tours: May-Sept 2.30, 3.30 & 4.30pm; 25F/?3.81), which provides the only access. A massive and imposing structure, it was home to the dukes of Savoie until they transferred to Turin, and is now occupied by the préfecture . A short walk north from the door of the castle along promenade Veyrat is the Musée des Beaux Arts (Mon & Wed-Sat 10am-noon & 2-6pm; 20F/?3.05), a provincial museum with a collection of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Italian works, including some good Renaissance paintings, as well as a number of less interesting nineteenth-century works. For those interested in medieval art, the church of St-Pierre-de-Lemenc , off boulevard de Lemenc (a twenty-minute walk north of the centre), is a must, featuring early Christian baptistery, Carolingian crypt and fourteenth-century sculpture (Sat 5-6pm, Sun 9.30-10.30am).
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