Learn Hardcore French: Je suis étonné de voir à quel point ce petit village attire des touristes. - I am amazed to see how much this small village attracts tourists.

À quel point literally means to what point/extent, and in natural English it corresponds to how much / how greatly / how many depending on context.

In this sentence, de voir à quel point ce petit village attire des touristes means to see how much this little village attracts tourists or to see to what extent this little village attracts tourists.

Grammatically, à quel point introduces a clause and works a bit like how in English:

Je suis étonné de voir à quel point il travaille. → I’m amazed to see how much he works.

Is étonné here a verb tense (like a past participle with être) or just an adjective?

In Je suis étonné, étonné behaves as an adjective, even though it is historically a past participle.

The structure is être + adjective:

Je suis étonné → I am surprised / amazed.
Like other adjectives, étonné agrees in gender and number with the subject (see next question). You can think of it much like English I am surprised: surprised is not a tense, it’s just describing your state.

How does gender and number agreement work with Je suis étonné?

Étonné must agree with the speaker:

A man (singular): Je suis étonné.
A woman (singular): Je suis étonnée.
Several men or a mixed group: Nous sommes étonnés.
Several women: Nous sommes étonnées.

In writing, you show agreement with -e for feminine and -s for plural; in spoken French, the extra -e is usually silent, while the plural -s may create liaison (e.g. étonnés often pronounced é-ton-né-z before a vowel).

Why do we say étonné de voir and not étonné à voir or étonné par voir?

With an infinitive (voir, entendre, constater, etc.), French normally uses de after étonné (and many similar adjectives):

Je suis étonné de voir…
Je suis heureux de te voir.

À voir would usually mean to be seen / when you see it (different structure), and par voir is simply incorrect. So for surprised to see, the natural form is étonné de voir.

Could we say Je suis étonné que ce petit village attire des touristes instead of de voir à quel point…? What’s the difference?

Yes, you can say:

Je suis étonné que ce petit village attire des touristes.

Main differences:

Structure
- Étonné de voir à quel point… focuses on the act of seeing/realising and the degree (how much).
- Étonné que ce petit village attire des touristes focuses more directly on the fact itself.
Subjunctive
With étonné que, many grammar books recommend the subjunctive:
- Je suis étonné que ce petit village attire / attire autant de touristes.
  In everyday speech, some speakers use the indicative, but the subjunctive is the “textbook” choice.

Both are correct, but the original sentence adds nuance about how strongly the village attracts tourists.

Why is petit placed before village? I thought French adjectives usually go after the noun.

Most French adjectives do come after the noun, but a common group goes before. A handy rule is the BANGS group: Beauty, Age, Number, Goodness, Size.

Petit is a size adjective, so it normally goes before the noun:

un petit village (a small village)
une grande ville (a big city)

So ce petit village is the standard, natural word order.

Why is attire in the simple present, not something like “is attracting”? How does the French present tense work here?

French generally uses the simple present for both:

English “attracts tourists”
and “is attracting tourists.”

So ce petit village attire des touristes can mean:

this little village attracts tourists (general, habitual fact)
or, in context, this little village is attracting tourists (current reality).

You would only use a progressive form in French (est en train d’attirer) if you really wanted to stress that the action is happening right now, at this very moment, which is not necessary here.

Why is it attire des touristes and not attire les touristes? What’s the nuance?

Des touristes = (some) tourists / tourists in general, an indefinite group.
Les touristes = the tourists, a specific, known group.

In this sentence, the idea is that the village attracts tourists in general, not a particular set of tourists you already have in mind. So the plural indefinite article des is the natural choice: attire des touristes.

Why isn’t it attire de touristes? I often see de instead of des after quantity words.

You’re right that after explicit quantity expressions, French uses de instead of des:

beaucoup de touristes
peu de touristes
trop de touristes

But here we just have a normal plural direct object (touristes) without a quantity word. In that case, the correct form is the plural indefinite article des:

Ce petit village attire des touristes. ✅
Ce petit village attire de touristes. ❌ (incorrect)

Could we move à quel point to a different place, like Ce petit village attire à quel point des touristes?

No, that word order is not natural in French. À quel point must stay with the clause it introduces, and in this kind of structure it normally comes right after the verb that introduces the fact you are evaluating (here: voir):

Je suis étonné de voir à quel point ce petit village attire des touristes.

You can change the sentence more radically (for example in a question: À quel point ce petit village attire-t-il des touristes ?), but you cannot simply drop à quel point into the middle of attire des touristes.

Is there a more colloquial or alternative way to express the same idea in French?

Yes, several possibilities, for example:

Ça m’étonne de voir à quel point ce petit village attire des touristes.
Je suis surpris de voir à quel point ce petit village attire des touristes.
Je trouve incroyable à quel point ce petit village attire des touristes.

Ça m’étonne… is more informal and closer to everyday spoken French. Surpris and incroyable change the nuance slightly, but the core meaning remains very close.