Short answers, pulled from the story.
Grenoble is known as the former capital of the Dauphiné province of France, a city with over 2,000 years of history stretching back to a Gallic village called Cularo in 43 BC. It played a pivotal role in the French Revolution through the Day of the Tiles on the 7th of June 1788, and was recognised by the Free French Forces as the Capital of the Maquis for its resistance during World War II.
Grenoble hosted the X Olympic Winter Games in 1968. The event modernised the city's infrastructure, bringing a new airport, motorways, a new town hall, and a new train station, and it spurred development of ski resorts including Chamrousse, Les Deux Alpes, and Villard-de-Lans.
Grenoble is a major European scientific centre because one in five inhabitants works directly in research, technology, or innovation. The city hosts the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the Institut Laue-Langevin, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and major research institutions linked to the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Its research model traces to 1955, when future Nobel Prize laureate Louis Néel founded the Grenoble Center for Nuclear Studies.
On the 7th of June 1788, the townspeople of Grenoble climbed onto rooftops and threw tiles at royal troops sent by Louis XVI to expel the city's notables. The confrontation prevented the expulsion and led directly to the Assembly of Vizille, whose members organised the meeting of the Estates General, an event that helped begin the French Revolution.
During his return from the island of Elba in 1815, Napoleon met the Royalist Régiment d'Angoulême at Laffrey, near Grenoble. He stepped toward the soldiers and declared: "If there is among you a soldier who wants to kill his Emperor, here I am." All the soldiers joined him, and he entered Grenoble through the Bonne gate, later saying: "From Cannes to Grenoble, I still was an adventurer; in that last city, I came back a sovereign."
The Grenoble metropolitan area had a population of 724,742 in 2022, making it the largest metropolis in the Alps, ahead of Innsbruck and Bolzano. The commune of Grenoble itself had a population of 156,140 as of 2023.