Morzine

Before Morzine was a ski town it was known for demonic possession. Beginning on March 14, 1857 with a ten-year-old girl named Peronne Tavernier, more than 200 local women and girls fell into trances and spoke in altered voices, in what became one of Europe’s last mass possession episodes; when France annexed Savoy in 1860, the government’s response was to dispatch prominent psychiatrists to investigate the town. Morzine has since settled into a quieter line of work as a working Savoyard market town at the heart of the Portes du Soleil, one of the largest linked ski areas in the world, spanning a dozen resorts across the French-Swiss border, with lifts rising straight from town toward Les Gets on one side and Avoriaz on the other.

The skiing is the Alps at their friendliest: tree-lined pistes, broad open ridges, and long border-hopping circuits that can fill a week without repeating a run. Unlike purpose-built resorts, Morzine existed long before the lifts, and its slate roofs and river valley keep it feeling like a real town. This map traces the folded terrain that surrounds it.