Paris is the obvious one, and the TGV means most of the rest are a couple of hours from it. Lyon has the food and two rivers; Bordeaux has the eighteenth century intact; Marseille is 2,600 years old and looks nothing like the rest of France; Strasbourg is half-German; Lille is Flemish; Toulouse is pink brick and aerospace; Nantes is the most inventive; Montpellier the youngest. None of them is a day trip from another — each is worth its own weekend.
Start here
If you only do cities once in France.
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Paris The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and twenty arrondissements of it -
Lyon Two rivers, Roman theatres, secret traboules and the bouchons -
Bordeaux An eighteenth-century city on a river, with 6,000 châteaux behind it -
Marseille The oldest city in France, 2,600 years old, with the Calanques next door -
Strasbourg A pink sandstone cathedral, La Petite France and the European Parliament -
Lille Flemish gables, a giant flea market and the best beer list in France
Region by region
Île-de-France
Paris, Versailles and the ring of royal forests and cathedral towns around them
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Eiffel Tower 324 m of wrought iron that was meant to come down after twenty years -
The Louvre The largest art museum in the world, in a former royal palace -
Notre-Dame de Paris Reopened in December 2024, five years after the fire -
Sacré-Cœur & Montmartre White travertine on the highest hill in Paris, over the old artists' quarter -
Musée d'Orsay The world's greatest Impressionist collection, inside a Beaux-Arts station -
Arc de Triomphe Twelve avenues radiate from it, and the rooftop is the best view of them -
The Panthéon Where the Republic buries the people it wants remembered -
Musée Rodin The Thinker and The Gates of Hell, in a garden off the Invalides -
The Catacombs Twenty metres down, the bones of six million Parisians - Centre Pompidou Europe's largest modern art collection, in a building worn inside out
Hauts-de-France
Flemish belfries, the Opal Coast and the battlefields of the Somme
Grand Est
Champagne cellars, the Alsace wine road and Strasbourg's Christmas markets
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Reims The coronation cathedral, Chagall's windows and champagne cellars beneath -
Nancy Place Stanislas, gilded railings and the École de Nancy's Art Nouveau -
Metz 6,500 m² of stained glass, and a Centre Pompidou under a Chinese hat -
La Petite France Tanners' houses over the canals, on a UNESCO-listed island -
Place Stanislas Gilded ironwork round one of the great squares of Europe
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
The world's most valuable vineyards, Romanesque abbeys and the Jura's quiet mountains
Normandy
The D-Day beaches, Mont-Saint-Michel, Monet's Giverny and the alabaster cliffs
Brittany
2,700 km of granite coast, standing stones older than the pyramids, and a Celtic language
Pays de la Loire
Where the Loire meets the Atlantic — Nantes, the Vendée beaches and the last châteaux
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Nantes A ducal château, a permanent art trail and a rideable mechanical elephant -
Angers A striped fortress holding 100 metres of fourteenth-century tapestry -
Le Mans A Roman-walled Plantagenet old town, and 24 hours of racing -
Les Machines de l'Île A 12 m mechanical elephant that carries fifty passengers
Centre-Val de Loire
The château valley — Chambord, Chenonceau and 280 km of UNESCO river
Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Bordeaux and its vineyards, the Dordogne's prehistory, and Europe's tallest dune
Occitanie
Carcassonne and the Cathar castles, the Canal du Midi, the Pyrenees and the Camargue's edge
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Toulouse Pink brick, Airbus, rugby and the biggest Romanesque church in Europe -
Montpellier Europe's oldest working medical school, and the sea ten minutes away - Nîmes The best-preserved Roman arena anywhere, still in weekly use
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Perpignan Catalan France — a palace of the Kings of Majorca, and sardanes
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Mont Blanc, the world's largest linked ski areas, Lyon's kitchens and a chain of volcanoes
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Grenoble A flat city with three mountain ranges starting at the ring road - Clermont-Ferrand A cathedral built from black lava, under a chain of volcanoes
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Chambéry The old Savoyard capital, and the doorway to the Tarentaise -
Vieux Lyon & the traboules Renaissance courtyards threaded by covered passages the Resistance used - Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière On the hill that prays, above the Roman theatres, over the whole city
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Lavender and Roman arenas inland, the Riviera on the coast, and the Alps behind both
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Nice The Baie des Anges, an Italian old town and the Promenade des Anglais -
Aix-en-Provence Plane trees, fountains, markets and Cézanne's mountain -
Avignon The largest Gothic palace in the world, and a bridge that stops halfway -
Toulon A naval harbour under Mont Faron, and the ferry to Porquerolles -
Promenade des Anglais Seven kilometres of seafront paid for by nineteenth-century English winterers
Corsica
A mountain in the sea — 1,000 km of coast, the GR20, and a language of its own
Guadeloupe
A butterfly-shaped Caribbean archipelago — rainforest on one wing, dry coast on the other
Martinique
The flower island — Mount Pelée, black-sand north, white-sand south and agricole rum
French Guiana
Amazon rainforest, a European spaceport, and the prison islands of Papillon
Réunion
An Indian Ocean volcano with three collapsed craters, and 1,000 km of walking trails
Mayotte
One of the world's largest lagoons, humpback whales, and a double coral barrier
Other kinds of place
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Coast & beaches Three seas and an ocean — around 5,800 km of mainland coast, and far more overseas -
Mountains Six massifs — the Alps, Pyrenees, Jura, Vosges, Massif Central and Corsica -
Villages & countryside The 180-odd villages on the official 'most beautiful in France' list -
National & regional parks Eleven national parks and 58 regional ones — about a fifth of the country