What's on in Strasbourg

The oldest Christmas market in France, running since 1570 — more than three hundred chalets across the squares of the island, a monumental tree on Place Kléber, and roughly two million visitors over four weeks.

Planning: It closes on 24 December and does not reopen between Christmas and New Year, which is the commonest wasted trip. Rooms double in price and book months ahead; security screening at the entrances to the Grande Île is much faster without a rucksack; and a weekday evening is a different market from a Saturday.

The other Strasbourg: long light evenings on the quays, free concerts, open-air cinema in the parks, and a city that empties of its students and fills with people eating outside.

Planning: The cheapest and least crowded time to see the old town properly. Museums keep normal hours, and the heat on the Rhine plain is the only thing to plan around.

The Parliament sits in Strasbourg for a few days a month, which fills the city's hotels with staff and journalists and is why prices swing so oddly outside the tourist season.

Planning: Check the session calendar before booking: a plenary week is the hardest week of an ordinary month to find a room in. Visiting the hemicycle is free with ID, but during a session it has to be booked.

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.