Paris is Paris and always will be. But for travellers willing to swap the Eiffel Tower for something gentler, these French and central European cities deliver more of the same magic with less of the metro.
Paris in summer has become a 90-minute queue at the Eiffel Tower and a 20-minute queue at most cafes worth visiting. Some travellers love that intensity. Others want the wrought-iron balconies, the patisserie windows and the long café lunches without the scale. France and a couple of its neighbours can deliver.
Within France
Colmar, Alsace
Half-timbered houses painted pink and ochre, a network of small canals locals call Little Venice, the Unterlinden Museum (which houses the Isenheim Altarpiece, one of the great paintings of European art), and a wine route that runs north and south through Riquewihr and Eguisheim. Colmar has none of Paris's monumental scale and arguably more of the storybook quality people fly to France hoping to find.
Lyon
The serious food capital of France, with the bouchons of Vieux Lyon, the Paul Bocuse legacy at the covered Halles, and two rivers (the Rhône and the Saône) joining at the southern tip of the Presqu'île. The old silk district of Croix-Rousse still has working ateliers behind the courtyards.
Strasbourg
Half-French, half-German in feel, a Gothic cathedral with the oldest still-functioning astronomical clock in the world, and the Petite France quarter on its little island. Easy to reach by TGV.
Bordeaux
After the river restoration in the early 2000s, the Garonne quayside is one of the great urban walks in France. The Place de la Bourse mirror pool, the cite du vin museum, and a wine country beginning where the tram line ends.
Aix-en-Provence
Cézanne's town and still the warmer, lighter alternative to most northern French cities. The Cours Mirabeau is the loveliest plane-tree boulevard in the country.
Across the border
Brussels
Underrated even by the people who live there. The Grand Place is one of the most theatrical squares in Europe, the comic-strip murals run for kilometres, and Saint-Gilles has the best Art Nouveau housing stock outside Vienna.
Vienna
If you wanted Paris partly for the coffee houses, the museum density and the Belle Époque architecture, Vienna delivers all three with shorter queues and a public transport system that actually keeps to its timetable.
Lisbon
Lisbon has become busy too, but its 20-degree winters, its Tagus light and the steep miradouro terraces in Alfama still make it one of the easiest Mediterranean cities to fall for.
If you really need Paris
Go in February or November, stay in the 11th rather than the 7th, eat dinner before 7 p.m. or after 10, and take the train out to Chartres for a day. Half the Paris people queue for is at its best when the city is grey and half-empty.
