The Most Beautiful Places in Haute-Savoie
6 places · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Haute-Savoie are Mont Blanc, Aiguille du Midi and Lake Annecy. The list covers 6 places. Last updated 6 October 2026.
Haute-Savoie is the corner of France where the Alps reach their greatest height. The Mont Blanc massif rises above the Chamonix valley in granite needles and long glaciers, while further west the limestone Pre-Alps enclose deep lakes left by the ice. Few places packed so much high mountain so close to towns, which is why Chamonix became a cradle of mountaineering and hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924.
Mont Blanc, the highest summit of the Alps, was first climbed in 1786 by Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard, an ascent often taken as the birth of alpinism. Opposite it the Aiguille du Midi carries a cable car from the valley floor to a terrace at almost 3,800 metres, one of the highest such lifts in the world, and along the frontier ridge the Dent du Géant stands out as a single fang of granite above 4,000 metres.
Lower down, the Mer de Glace, the longest glacier in France, curls out of the massif towards Chamonix; the Montenvers rack railway has carried visitors to its edge since 1908, and the ever-lower ice now shows plainly how far it has retreated. At the other end of the department lies Lake Annecy, a long glacial lake framed by limestone mountains, with the old town of Annecy and its canals at its northern tip.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mont Blanc | Mountain | |
| 2 | Aiguille du Midi | Scenic viewpoint | |
| 3 | Lake Annecy | Lake | |
| 4 | Mer de Glace | Glacier | |
| 5 | Montenvers Railway (Chamonix) | Rack railway | |
| 6 | Téléphérique de l'Aiguille du Midi | Aerial tramway |
01 Mont Blanc
France · 36.6 km from Aosta45.833° N 6.865° E
Image by Rianne_SchillerMclean from Pixabay Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps and in Europe outside the Caucasus, standing on the border between France and Italy. Its exact height is a moving target, because the summit is a cap of snow and ice that thickens and thins with the weather.
Did you know? Two Air India airliners crashed into the massif, in 1950 and 1966; the second killed Homi Bhabha, father of India's nuclear programme.
02 Aiguille du Midi
France · 36.8 km from Aosta45.879° N 6.888° E
Image by Simon from Pixabay The Aiguille du Midi is a 3,842-metre rock needle in the Mont Blanc massif, and one of the few places in the Alps where anyone can stand face to face with the high mountains without climbing. Its name means "needle of midday".
Did you know? The present cable car was built in about five years by the Turin entrepreneur Dino Lora Totino and opened in 1955.
03 Lake Annecy
France · 6.8 km from Annecy45.850° N 6.167° E
Image by 1466325 from Pixabay Lake Annecy fills a glacial basin in the Pre-Alps of Haute-Savoie, left behind when the great Alpine glaciers melted some 17,000–18,000 years ago. 6 km², which makes it the third-largest lake in France, and it lies at roughly 447 m above sea level.
Did you know? The lake froze over completely in the winter of 1573, and the last significant freeze lasted from December 1891 to March 1892.
04 Mer de Glace
France · 35.5 km from Aosta45.916° N 6.937° E
Image by Simon from Pixabay The Mer de Glace, the "sea of ice", is a river of ice about 7 km long, or some 12 km if its feeder glaciers are counted, flowing down the northern side of the Mont Blanc massif towards the Chamonix valley.
Did you know? In 1840 the canon Louis Rendu observed that the centre of the glacier moves faster than its edges, a key early insight into how ice flows.
05 Montenvers Railway (Chamonix)
Chemin de fer du Montenvers
France · 39.9 km from Aosta45.923° N 6.875° E
Tiia Monto · CC BY-SA 3.0 The little red rack train from Chamonix exists for a single view: the Mer de Glace, the "sea of ice" that pours down from the heart of the Mont Blanc massif.
Did you know? The route passes through two tunnels, the Grépon tunnel of 306 metres and the Planards tunnel of 104 metres.
06 Téléphérique de l'Aiguille du Midi
Téléphérique de l'Aiguille-du-Midi
France45.918° N 6.870° E
Image by GLM35 from Pixabay Few machines lift you into another world as abruptly as the Téléphérique de l'Aiguille du Midi.
Did you know? Even in summer, temperatures on the open summit terraces can drop to around minus 10 °C.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Haute-Savoie?
- On our list, Mont Blanc ranks first, followed by Aiguille du Midi and Lake Annecy.
- When was Mont Blanc first climbed?
- Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard, both from Chamonix, reached the summit on 8 August 1786. The prize offered by the scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure had encouraged the attempt.
- How was Lake Annecy formed?
- Lake Annecy fills a basin shaped by glaciers during the last ice age and was left when the ice melted. It is fed by mountain streams and an underwater spring.
- Why is the Mer de Glace getting smaller?
- Like most Alpine glaciers, the Mer de Glace has been melting faster than winter snow can replenish it since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 19th century. Its surface has dropped so far that the stairs from the Montenvers station keep getting longer.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Haute-Savoie?
- In our collection, the places in Haute-Savoie are most often summits (1), mountains (1), glaciers (1) and lakes (1).
- How many places are on this list in Haute-Savoie?
- The list covers 6 places.