Chalet Rentals Close to the Village Centre in the Alps

In minutes on foot and in height gained, never in metres. A chalet 200 m above the square is reached in five minutes going down and twelve coming up, carrying bags. The same gap on the flat is walked both ways without a thought. Slope is therefore the only useful unit, and it is the one to ask about. Two things are added in winter. Is the pavement cleared and lit in the evening, or is it a walk on the roadway? And the car: a central chalet does not always come with parking, which becomes a daily constraint when the group arrives in two vehicles.

In some resorts yes, in others you have to choose. Courchevel was built in 1946 on bare pasture, with a plan that brings the pistes down into the inhabited levels: the centre of Courchevel 1850 and the snow front are the same place. Val d'Isère, at 1,850 m, has the same configuration. Those are the two resorts where the question does not arise. In Megève, Chamonix and Les Houches, the village settled on the valley floor long before the lifts, which went up onto the heights afterwards. Staying central there means reaching the skiing by shuttle or car. In exchange you get a town that is alive in April as in July.

It depends on the kind of centre, and the difference is clear. A snow front concentrates bars and terraces along a few hundred metres, with activity that starts when the lifts close and runs late between Christmas and February. A house looking onto it enjoys the life and puts up with it. A year-round town spreads its tables across wider fabric, among residents who work the next morning. The noise there is a village's, not a season's. For a family stay the question to ask is what sits under the bedroom windows, not what the address says: two houses on the same street are not exposed alike.

The split runs between villages older than skiing and resorts created for it. Five of the communes served already had a square, a church and streets when the first lifts went up on their heights. You find a centre there in the ordinary sense of the word, with a bakery open in October, a school and residents who do not leave in spring. Courchevel and Val d'Isère offer something else: a resort centre, dense, turned towards skiing and the table, very lively five months a year and quiet the rest. Méribel holds a position of its own, with fabric under an architectural charter that gives a recent centre the look of an old village.