Every design for Gap

Have you ever come over the Col Bayard on the Route Napoléon and watched Gap open out in the valley below? It is a view that explains the town: France's highest prefecture, sitting in a broad, crescent-shaped valley carved by the Durance glacier, with the Écrins to the north, the Dévoluy to the north-west and the Colombis massif to the south-east.

The little peak of Puymaure rises right above the streets, and the slopes of Charance climb to almost two thousand metres within the commune. Down in the centre, the Musée départemental keeps the memory of a valley settled since the Neolithic and known to the Romans as Vappincum, and the Statue Ladoucette stands in the town it watched grow. Gap was named Alpine Town of the Year, and L'Équipe once called it the sportiest city in France, a title that fits a town with mountains on every side. The climate helps: plenty of Mediterranean sunshine, with proper mountain winters.

If Gap is where you learned to ski, climb or simply look up, wear it whenever you are far from the Alps.