Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is a large region covering about 15% of mainland France, from the Massif Central mountains to the Alps, in the southern half of the country. Its main city is Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France, and two of its departments, Ain and Haute-Savoie, border on Switzerland.

Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is an administrative region, not a geographical reality. Born from the new French territorial organisation of 2015, it groups together Auvergne, the region of the sleeping volcanoes of the Massif Central, and the Rhône-Alpes region, which extends along the Rhône river to Provence and in the French Alps to the Mont Blanc massif shared with Italy.

The region includes 13 departments: Ain, Allier, Ardèche, Cantal, Drôme, Isère, Loire, Haute-Loire, Puy-de-Dôme, Rhône, Métropole de Lyon, Savoie and Haute-Savoie. Two of these departments border on Switzerland: Ain, which surrounds the canton of Geneva, and Haute-Savoie, which encompasses the southern shore of Lake Geneva, opposite the canton of Vaud, from Geneva in the west to Valais in the east.

Our 2022 "Switzerland Tour outside Switzerland" passed through the French side of Lake Geneva and the Genevois (the region around Geneva) before heading for the Jura mountain range, the south-western end of which is part of the Ain department. After passing through the whole of Switzerland via the French region of Grand Est, southern Germany, western Austria and northern Italy, it ended in the Pre-Alps of Haute-Savoie.

Between the lake shore with its almost Mediterranean atmosphere and the wild slopes of the Jura and the Alps, we were able to shoot a wide variety of 360° panoramas, which only makes you want to discover more!