What's on in Paris

The city hands itself over to contemporary art for a night — installations in metro stations, swimming pools, churches and streets, all free, until dawn.

Planning: The metro runs late on the night and the map is published a week or two ahead. Pick three or four pieces in one arrondissement rather than crossing the city; the queues are for the famous ones.

The clay-court Grand Slam, played in the 16th arrondissement over a fortnight — and the reason central hotel prices step up for two weeks in what is otherwise the best month to visit.

Planning: Tickets go by ballot months ahead. Even without them, the qualifying rounds the week before are cheap and lightly attended.

The Seine and the Bassin de la Villette get sand, deckchairs, showers and free activities for six weeks, and stretches of riverside road close to traffic. Bathing in the Seine at supervised sites returned in 2025 after a century's ban.

Planning: Free and unbookable. Swimming sites have fixed hours, capacity limits and closures after heavy rain — check the day you go rather than the week before.

The race ends with laps of the centre, on cobbles, in front of enormous crowds. The 2024 edition finished in Nice instead, so the Paris finish is traditional rather than guaranteed.

Planning: Free to watch and closed to traffic for most of the day. Pick a spot on a corner hours ahead, or watch from a café with a screen and no crowd.

The whole country plays music in the street for one night — professionals on real stages, amateurs on the pavement outside their own front door — and it is free everywhere. It started in France in 1982 and has been exported to a hundred-odd countries since.

A military parade in the morning and fireworks after dark, plus the bals des pompiers — dances held in fire stations on the 13th and 14th, open to anyone and famously good fun.

Buildings that are never open — ministries, private hôtels particuliers, working palaces — open free for two days. It is the one weekend of the year you can walk into the places you normally photograph from the pavement.

Not a festival — the annual shutdown. Bakeries, butchers, family restaurants and small shops close for two or three weeks and put a handwritten note on the door, and cities empty of the people who live in them.

Wooden chalets, vin chaud and regional food, at their oldest and best in Alsace — Strasbourg's dates from 1570 — and now in almost every French city centre.