At the edge of the turquoise Lac d'Annecy, bounded to the east by the turreted peaks of La Tournette and to the west by the long wooded ridge of Le Semnoz, ANNECY is one of the most beautiful and popular resort towns of the French Alps, though the tourist traffic can get a bit wearing in high season. Historically, it enjoyed a brief flurry of importance in the early sixteenth century, when Geneva opted for the Reformation and the fugitive Catholic bishop decamped here with a train of ecclesiastics and a prosperous, cultivated elite.