French AlpsVal d'Isère

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One of the world's most famous ski resorts, Val d'Isère offers a vast skiing panorama made famous by the great French skier, Jean Claude Killy, after whom the ski area, Espace Killy, is now named. The resort has it all - a huge vertical stretching up to an altitude of year-round snow and skiing, with 90 lifts opening up seemingly endless terrain, including Olympic and annual World Cup downhills. In 2004 the resort won the rights to host the Alpine Ski World Championships, making it only the third resort in history to host all three events - and the only resort in the modern era to do so. The resort is however, one of those that have materialised from nothing at the turn of the last century, when it was just a small hamlet at the valley head, served by a rough mule track. The farms about the area lay dormant for up to 8 months of the year because of the snow. It all changed in the early 1930s when Parisian industrialist Jacques Mouflier persuaded the local mayor to work to turn Val d'Isère in to a ski resort. The rest, as they say, is history. The local farmers trained as ski school instructors, a ski shop opened, the authorities brought running water and electricity to the village and six years later the first ski lift was installed. Today the resort, which then had just four hotels, can cater for over 28,000 overnight guests, staying in the resort centre or in one of the satellite accommodation complexes of Le Fornet or La Daille. Rapid development in the 1950s and 1960s led to the construction of some rather ugly concrete buildings, but in recent years the resort has worked hard to use local materials and architectural styles to make it far more attractive.