Grand Est, France — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Grand Est known for?

Champagne is the first, poured from the chalk cellars around Reims and the vineyards south of it. The Rhine is the second, forming much of the German border and giving Strasbourg, the largest city and the seat of the European Parliament, its half-French, half-German character. The Vosges mountains are the third, a wooded range that rises between the Alsace plain and Lorraine and shelters the villages of the Alsace Wine Route.

Border wars round out the reputation, with the fortress town of Verdun standing for the worst of them.

Where is Grand Est?

Grand Est fills the north-eastern corner of France, landlocked and pressed against four foreign countries. No other French region touches so many. Germany lies along its eastern edge, Belgium and Luxembourg to the north, and Switzerland at its south-eastern tip. The Rhine draws much of the German line, running north between the Alsace plain and the Black Forest beyond.

Two ranges frame the interior. The Vosges rise in the east, a rounded, forested wall between Alsace and Lorraine, and the Ardennes spread across the north into Belgium. Between and beyond them the land opens into the chalk downs of Champagne and the plateaus of Lorraine, drained by the Moselle as it climbs down from the Vosges toward Luxembourg.

Water sorts the region into three basins, feeding the Seine to the west, the Meuse to the north and the Rhine to the east. It is the fifth largest of France's regions. Strasbourg stands in the far east, on the Ill just short of the Rhine and the German bank.

Reims sits well to the west in Champagne, closer to Paris than to the mountains. That spread from chalk vineyard to wooded ridge is the whole shape of the place.

What is Grand Est like?

Grand Est reads as French with a German accent. Centuries of shifting borders left the mix in the fabric of daily life. In Alsace the older people still speak Alsatian, an Alemannic German dialect, and Lorraine keeps its own Franconian speech along the Moselle.

It shows on the plate as clearly as in the talk. Choucroute, the Alsatian sauerkraut piled with sausage and pork, sits beside quiche Lorraine and flammekueche, the thin cream-and-onion tart of the Alsace plain. The architecture carries the same double signature.

Half-timbered houses in ochre and blue crowd the lanes of Colmar and the wine villages, while Strasbourg wears a heavy German-built quarter from its decades under the Kaiser. Wine is the through-line. The Alsace Wine Route runs the foot of the Vosges through Riquewihr and Eguisheim, pouring Riesling and Gewürztraminer, and to the west the chalk of Champagne makes the sparkling wine that carries the region's name worldwide.

Winter brings the Christkindelmärik. Strasbourg's Christmas market, among the oldest in Europe, fills the squares beneath the cathedral each December and draws crowds from across the border.

What is the history of Grand Est?

Grand Est is young as a region and old as a battleground. It was formed in 2016 by merging Alsace, Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine. Borders shifted here for centuries.

Germany annexed Alsace and part of Lorraine after defeating France in 1871, held them until 1918, and seized them again in the Second World War. That is why Strasbourg carries a German-built quarter and Verdun carries the scars of 1916, when one of the longest battles of the First World War ground on through the hills above the Meuse.

What is the climate of Grand Est?

The region straddles two climates. Champagne and western Lorraine sit under an oceanic sky, with mild, damp winters and warm summers carried in off the Atlantic weather. East of the Vosges the mountains wring out much of that rain, and the Alsace plain turns drier and more continental, its winters colder and its summers hotter.

Alsace is one of the sunniest, driest corners of France as a result, which is part of why its slopes ripen wine so well. Snow settles on the Vosges tops most winters.

How do you get to Grand Est?

Grand Est is easiest to reach by land, over rail and road. Trains do much of the work. Its position against the German border puts it at a rail crossroads, and high-speed trains link Strasbourg and Reims to Paris in a couple of hours.

Strasbourg has its own airport, and the Basel-Mulhouse airport shared with Switzerland serves the south of Alsace. The Rhine carries freight and river cruises along the German edge. Inside the region, rail and motorway tie the Alsace plain to Lorraine over and around the Vosges.