Esprit Village | Vars: Hautes-Alpes ski resort

Esprit Villages

The art of mountain living

Are we talking about snow days? There are those who see bad weather… but here, when the snow falls, when muffled, white silence covers nature, the mind easily wanders before getting carried away! So we go out, make snowballs, let the flakes land on our faces and try to drink a few. Village alleyways become trails on which to make your tracks, feel the fresh snow crackle under your feet… how good: then you return with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile to warm up by the fire, in front of a steaming hot drink, waiting for the sun to return to sublimate a new landscape that then offers itself to us…

Chutes de neige abondantes dans les villages de Vars

Cœur du village de Vars Sainte Catherine sous la neige

Chutes de neige dans les villages de Vars

Warm ambience

From sunrise to sunset, each of the hamlets finds its light: Vars Saint Marcellin and Vars Sainte-Marie shine at sunrise, while the zenith illuminates all sectors, it’s Vars Sainte-Catherine that benefits until the last hours from the much sought-after golden rays.

The Mediterranean ambience can be heard in the warm welcome, the friendly, comforting atmosphere at the heart of an environment enhanced by the beauty of the finely jagged scenery of the peaks that embrace this valley of the torrent du Chagne. It shares its path with the Route des Grandes Alpes, which winds past the Col de Vars to reach the Grande Bleue.

The altitude confers a pure air conducive to rejuvenation under the majestic gaze of the Eyssina peaks, or the Vars peaks with the Ecrins peaks and their eternal snows in the distance…

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Discover the villages

Les villages de Vars vêtus de leur manteau blanc

Vue Aérienne de Vars Sainte Catherine sous la neige

This is the picture-postcard atmosphere of the 3 mountain hamlets that complete the teeming resort heart of Les Claux: Vars offers visitors all the facets of a valley rich in history, with an ancestral heritage where time revels in an art of living carried on by the women and men who forged this territory.

Curious visitors will be able to discover, as they wander around, all those special features that make the village spirit so unique in Vars.

Le clocher de l'église de Vars Saint Marcellin sous la neige

Vars Sainte Catherine, le lavoir et le four banal sous les chutes de neige

A uniqueness that can also be found in the warmth of the typical mountain welcome of the locals, who keep the villages alive by bringing to them the fruit of work sometimes handed down over several generations: hotels and restaurants are places of comfort and indulgence carried by the history of the old farms that house them. The rhythms of the times are to be found in the heart of the alleyways, known here as “charrières”, where sundials with mottoes full of wisdom can be seen here and there. Laundries are a reminder that these were once real places of social life.