Multichronometric analyses were performed on samples from a transect in the French–Italian Western Alps crossing nappes derived from the Briançonnais terrane and the Piemonte–Liguria Ocean, in an endeavour to date both high-pressure (HP) metamorphism and retrogression history. Twelve samples of white mica were analysed by 39Ar–40Ar stepwise heating, complemented by two samples from the Monte Rosa nappe 100 km to the NE and also attributed to the Briançonnais terrane. One Sm–Nd and three Lu–Hf garnet ages from eclogites were also obtained. White mica ages decrease from c. 300 Ma in the westernmost samples (Zone Houillère), reaching c. 300°C during Alpine metamorphism, to <48 Ma in the internal units to the east, which reached c. 500°C during the Alpine orogeny. The spatial pattern of Eocene K–Ar ages demonstrates that Si-rich HP white mica records the age of crystallization at 47–48 Ma and retains Ar at temperatures of around 500°C. Paleocene–early Eocene Lu–Hf and Sm–Nd ages, recording prograde garnet growth before the HP peak, confirm eclogitization in Eocene times. Petrological and microstructural features reveal important mineralogical differences along the transect. All samples contain mixtures of detrital, syn-D1 and syn-D2 mica, and retrogression phases (D3) in greatly varying proportions according to local variations in the evolution of pressure–temperature–fluid activity–deformation (P–T–a–D) conditions. Samples from the Zone Houillère mostly contain detrital mica. The abundance of white mica with Si > 6·45 atoms per formula unit increases eastward. Across the whole traverse, phengitic mica grown during HP metamorphism defines the D1 foliation. Syn-D2 mica is more Si-poor and associated with nappe stacking, exhumation, and hydrous retrogression under greenschist-facies conditions. Syn-D1 phengite is very often corroded, overgrown by, or intergrown with, syn-D2 muscovite. Most importantly, syn-D2 recrystallization is not limited to S2 schistosity domains; micrometre-scale chemical fingerprinting reveals muscovite pseudomorphs after phengite crystals, which could be mistaken for syn-D1 mica based on microstructural arguments alone. The Cl/K ratio in white mica is a useful discriminator, as D2 retrogression was associated with a less saline fluid than eclogitization. As petrology exerts the main control on the isotope record, constraining the petrological and microstructural framework is necessary to correctly interpret the geochronological data, described in both the present study and the literature. Our approach, which ties geochronology to detailed geochemical, petrological and microstructural investigations, identifies 47–48 Ma as the age of HP formation of syn-D1 mica along the studied transect and in the Monte Rosa area. Cretaceous apparent mica ages, which were proposed to date eclogitization by earlier studies based on conventional ‘thermochronology’, are due to Ar inheritance in incompletely recrystallized detrital mica grains. The inferred age of the probably locally diachronous, greenschist-facies, low-Si, syn-D2 mica ranges from 39 to 43 Ma. Coexistence of D1 and D2 ages, and the constancy of non-reset D1 ages along the entire transect, provides strong evidence that the D1 white mica ages closely approximate formation ages. Volume diffusion of Ar in white mica (activation energy E = 250 kJ mol−1; pressure-adjusted diffusion coefficient D'0 < 0·03 cm2 s−1) has a subordinate effect on mineral ages compared with both prograde and retrograde recrystallization in most samples. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]