Grafted onto the rock face, perched up at a height of 1,100 meters, a fantastic concrete edifice rises up into the sky. It's the Salève cable car, located in the Alpine southeastern French department of Haute-Savoie: An assembly of columns and footbridges topped by a long shape that looks like a zeppelin floating in the blue sky – or an eerie ghost ship, depending on the weather. Mont Salève, the last bastion of the Jura mountain range, whose placid silhouette stands out amid the skies over Geneva, Switzerland, offers a breathtaking view of the neighboring Alps.

It has inspired poets and writers, and served as a playground for rock-climbing and mountain rescue pioneers. Although it's no longer skiable – there's not enough snow – it still promises Geneva city dwellers immediate access to nature. A few bus stops, a five-minute walk across the border to France, a jaunt through the picturesque village of Monnetier-Mornex, to the cable car's lower station, and off you go for a picnic amid the peaks, a hike in the woods or a downhill mountain bike ride.

People also come here to have lunch at Vertiges, the aptly named panoramic restaurant, or to take part in corporate seminars; to enjoy the vistas offered by a fascinating array of lookout points and terraces, or to take to the skies in a paraglider. The aerial tramway, which had long been reduced to its purely infrastructural dimension, has now returned to its original vocation.

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