Rhône waterway network with Lake Bourget, through the Canal de Savières. Cities and towns along the Rhône include: Rhône The Rhône (, ; ; ; ; ; ) is one of the major rivers of Europe and has twice the average discharge of the Loire (which is the longest French river), rising in the Rhône Glacier in the Swiss Alps at the far eastern end of the Swiss canton of Valais, passing through Lake Geneva and running through southeastern France. At Arles, near its mouth on the Mediterranean Sea, the river divides into two branches, known as the Great Rhône ()
Geology of the Alps and high peaks in the Pennine Alps and Hohe Tauern . The formation of the Mediterranean Sea is a more recent development and does not mark the northern extent of terranes originating within the African plate. The Alps form a northward convex arc around their southeastern foreland basin, the Po river basin (to be precise the south is in fact their hinterland). Quaternary and Neogene sediments in this basin lie discordant over the southernmost thrust units. In the northeast, southward dipping and internally thrusted Cenozoic foreland deposits (flysch and molasse) are found. This Bavarian and Swiss foreland basin is called