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An hour east from Lyons the flatlands of the Rhone Valley begin to fold and crease and the roads, flat and straight until then, start to rise and fall, weave and curve as the landscape changes. I was on my way to Annecy, capital of the Haute Savoie, and before I knew it the plains were behind me and the Alps were making their presence felt.

With time to spare I made a short detour to Aix-Les-Bains, a dignified grande-dame of a resort on the edge of Le Bourget lake and one of France's most celebrated spa towns. But Aix, I discovered, is no faded museum piece. Wander through this lively, energetic little town, place your bets in its sumptuous fin-de-siecle Casino or take to the lake on a cruise to the Abbey of Hautecombe and the thirteenth-century Chateau de Chatillon, and you'll find that Aix has a lot more going for it than healing springs and belle-epoque trappings.

Like Aix-les-Bains, Annecy has its own lake, a mountain-edged expanse of glittering water that may be smaller than Le Bourget but is no less agreeable. Paddle-steamers and cruisers shuttle gaily along its shoreline, calling in at lakeside villages like Veyrier and Taillories, windsurf and yacht sails speckle its surface with brilliant chips of colour, while grand chateaux like Duingt, Menthon St Bernard and the town's own 12th century castle rise above it like ancient sentinels. From whatever angle you view it, from the tree-shaded gardens, quays and battlements of Annecy, from the sloping pasture land of the Col de Bluffy, or from the belvederes of the Semnoz massif, it's an unforgettable sight, sparkling beneath a blue, alpine sky or draped in shawls of mist like the ghostly setting for a gothic novel.

Of course Annecy's lake and mountains are only half the story. Even without this magnificent natural backdrop the old town of Annecy would still be remarkable, with a maze of cobbled streets, medieval arcades and flower-decked quays and bridges that date back to the days when the Counts of Geneva held sway here. Prominent amongst its many sites is the twelfth-century Palais de l'Isle in the middle of the Thiou river, a corner of its ancient walls parting the river's fast-flowing waters like the bows of a ship. In its time this tiny jewel of a palace has served as a governor's residence, a town hall, a mint and a prison. Every Sunday morning the streets around it fill with market stalls and its ancient walls ring with the chatter of stall-holders and crowds, just as they have for centuries past.

It was in Annecy in 1728 that the writer and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau first met his muse and "Maman", Madame de Warens. But it was in Chambéry, 50 kilometres to the south, that their relationship bloomed. Rousseau spent many years here, loved the surrounding countryside and in his Confessions declared that "if there is in the world a little town where one tastes the sweetness of life in pleasant and certain commerce it is Chambéry." It is easy to understand his affection. Seen from the terraced gardens of Les Charmettes, the country retreat he shared with Madame de Warens, Chambéry sits in a bowl of land surrounded by the heights of the Bauges, Chartreuse and Jura massifs, its fortified towers, turrets and lofty spires diminished by the mighty flanks of Mount Granier and Mount Nivolet.

The capital of Savoy from 1232 until 1562, Chambéry has a marked Italian character, its rose-coloured facades elegantly finished with wrought-iron fanlights, balconies and gates, and its principal thoroughfare, the rue de Boigne, wide, arrow-straight and grandly arcaded. As an increasingly important administrative and commercial centre, Chambery has grown dramatically since Rousseau's day, but in its perfectly-preserved old town I found a network of squares and streets and narrow alleyways that he would surely have recognised. Set beneath the monumental walls of the Chateau of the Dukes of Savoy and in the shadow of the fortified and flamboyant Sainte Chapelle, whose 70-bell carillon rings out over the valley and whose frescoed trompe l'oeil ceiling has to be seen to be believed, this ancient quarter is full of shadowy courtyards and sinuous passageways, arched loggias and secret gardens concealed behind the noble facades of Chambery's sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century townhouses.

If Annecy and Chambery are known for their association with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Grenoble is the city of Marie Henri Beyle, better known by his adopted nom de plume, Stendhal. Born here in 1783, christened in the Church of St Hugues, educated at Grenoble's Ecole Centrale (now the Stendhal Lycee), and fond of a glass or two at the Cafe de la Table Ronde on Place St Andre, Stendhal is Grenoble's favourite son. Wherever you go in the city it is almost impossible to avoid some reference to this celebrated man of letters. Indeed, I had only to see the mountains rising up around Grenoble to be reminded of his famous line - "au bout de chaque rue, une montagne" (at the end of every street, a mountain) - which so precisely describes Grenoble's magnificent alpine setting.

Today Grenoble is a prosperous, thriving city, capital of the French Alps and home to one of the country's leading universities. Built at the confluence of the Isere and Drac rivers, it is filled with elegantly-proportioned shopping streets, tree-shaded parkland, riverside quays and enough galleries and museums to satisfy the most committed culture-hound. The Dauphinois Museum, housed in a seventeenth-century convent and devoted to local history, arts and crafts, the recently opened Grenoble Museum, with more than fifteen hundred works of art on display, and the Museum of the French Revolution at Vizille on the outskirts of the city are particularly noteworthy.

Like its neighbours Annecy and Chambery, Grenoble is an excellent base from which to explore the surrounding countryside. Drive up into the highlands of the Chartreuse, celebrated as much for its alpine scenery as it is for the centuries-old liqueur made by the monks of La Grande Chartreuse Monastery, or burrow into the gorges and canyons of the Vercors, one of the most spectacular regional parks in France, and you'll discover a wild and timeless landscape where nature, not man, holds dominion.

It was through the Vercors that I made my way back to the valley flatlands of the Rhone, following the river north from Valence, with its exuberant renaissance facades, to Vienne, with its extraordinary Roman remains. Crossing the Rhone at Vienne there was one further ascent, across the Park du Pilat on the edge of the Monts du Lyonnais, before arriving finally in St Etienne.

Throughout its history coal has been the key to St Etienne's wealth, its prosperity built on the rich seam that lay beneath its foundations, a motherlode that produced more than 500 million tons of coal before the mines were finally closed in the 1980s. By putting this valuable natural resource to work in its medieval forges and furnaces, St Etienne rapidly established itself as the town that made everything - from weaponry to weaving, from bicycles to brocade. Visit the city's Museum of Art and Industry with its fine collections of looms, bicycles and firearms (look out especially for the hunting guns ordered by Napoleon for his Egyptian campaign) and you'll appreciate just how skilled and talented its artisans were.

But for all its blast-furnace past, St Etienne is no dour, industrial city. With a few notable exceptions, particularly the fifteenth-century Grand' Eglise of St Stephen with its softened sandstone exterior, the timber-framed houses with overhanging upper floors and the sixteenth and seventeenth century facades of the old St Jacques quarter, St Etienne is resolutely modern in style and spirit. It's a twentieth-century city that has worked hard for its wealth and well-being but knows how to enjoy itself too. It has one of the great chefs of France, Pierre Gagnaire, who cooks in his opulent art deco mansion; it has its very own theatre company to lay on the entertainment; the second largest public collection of modern and contemporary art after the Pompidou Centre in Paris; and some twelve hundred acres of parkland spread throughout the city. No more than 15 minutes away lie the wilds of Mont Pilat, with its beech and fir forests, its peaks and pastureland, orchards and vineyards, and also the lake shores and marinas of Saint Victor-sur-Loire, that other great French river that rises here in the Rhone Alpes.

Suggested Itineraries

Mileage is estimated distance from each proceding town or site.

A: Lyons Renaissance old town, basilica of Fourviere, Roman theatres, ruins and museum, Opera, Fine Arts museum, weavers' workshops

Pergoues (20 miles) Fortified medieval village, 15th-century gateways, local history museum

Lent (17 miles) 9th-century Roman church, 16th-century clock tower

Bourg-en-Bresse(7 miles) 16th-century Brou church, cloistered monastery museum

Chatillon-sur-Chalaronne (18 miles) 17th-century covered market, 15th-century church, timbered houses, feudal castle ruins

Villars-les-Dombes (11 miles) Gothic church, roman ruins, Dombes Bird Park

Trevoux (18 miles) 17th century Parliament house, 18th century mansions, 10th century castle ruins

B: Nyons Old town, 13th century bridge, olive mills, olive museum

Grignan (18 miles) Hilltop town, renaissance chateau

Montelimar (19 miles) Nougat capital, medieval town centre, 12th century Chateau

Viviers (9 miles) Medieval town, 12th-15th century cathedral, 16th-17th-century mansions, 18th-century Bishops Palace

Alba la Romaine (10 miles) 16th-century chateau, roman theatre, archaeological museum

Villeneuve-de-berg (7 miles) 14th century ramparts, 16th-17th-18th century mansions, bee museum

Vogue (7 miles) Arched streets, 12th-century chateau, local museum

Balazuc (6 miles) 12th-century village, romanesque church, clifftop setting

Aubenas (14 miles) 12th-15th-century chateau, 16th century houses, 17th-century chapel

Val les Bains (6 miles) Belle epoque spa town

La Voulte (50 miles) 14th century chateau, 17th century chapel

Valence (13 miles) Romanesque cathedral, ornate renaissance facades, museum of fine arts

Tournon-sur-Rhone (10 miles) 14th-century church, 15th century chateau, local history museum

C: Romans 13th-century church, shoe museum

St-Antoine (16 miles)13th-15th century abbey

St Marcellin (9 miles) Cheese-making town, cheese museum in old convent

Voiron (26 miles) Chartreuse distillery and cellars

Grenoble (18 miles) Art and sculpture Museum, Stendhal Museum, Dauphinois Museum, St Laurent church and crypts,

Le Touvet (20 miles) 14th-century chateau, water gardens

Chambery (22 miles) Chateau of the Dukes of Savoy, Sainte Chapelle, Elephant Fountain, Rousseau's home Les Charmettes, Andre Malraux Cultural Centre

Annecy (25 miles) Chateau museum, old town and lake

Sevrier (6 miles) Paccard Bell Museum

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