France outside Paris is not a reduced version of the capital: these are cities with their own economic history — silk, wine, English winter tourism — which shaped them. All three are two or three hours from Paris by TGV and cost appreciably less.
Lyon: the city of passages
Lyon has something that exists nowhere else: the traboules, private passages cutting through buildings from one street to another. About fifty are open to the public under a 1990 agreement by which the city pays for cleaning and lighting in exchange for pedestrian access, every day from 7am to 7pm. They are free and marked by plaques, but they remain the hallways of lived-in houses: outside those hours the doors are locked.
The Croix-Rousse hill explains the city: the buildings have four-metre ceilings so the Jacquard looms of the canuts, the silk weavers, would fit, which is why the houses have enormous windows and odd proportions. Up there is the Mur des Canuts, 1,200 square metres painted in 1987 and repainted roughly every ten years so the characters age along with the district.
Verified budget: €120-170 a day in mid-season. To avoid if you want quiet: December, when the Festival of Lights takes the bill to €170-250 and hotels have to be booked months ahead.
Bordeaux: the wine, but also the river
Bordeaux is a run of 18th-century façades along the bend of the Garonne, and it is the cheapest of the three: €110-160 a day in mid-season, €75-110 between January and March.
The part visitors skip is the Chartrons quarter, the old wine merchants' district on the riverfront north of the centre: 18th-century warehouses turned into galleries, natural-wine bars and brocante, away from the crowd. And the Marché des Capucins, where locals have breakfast with oysters and a glass of white from first thing — not a tourist device, simply when the stalls open.
A detail architects enjoy: the Pont de Pierre, commissioned by Napoleon, has 17 arches, one for each letter of his name.
Nice: and the Monday of the Cours Saleya
Nice is the dearest of the three — €130-180 a day in mid-season, up to €180-270 in August and during Carnival — but it is also the only one on the sea, and until 1860 it was not French but Savoyard: it shows in the ochre façades of the old town and in half the cooking.
The fact that turns a day around: the Cours Saleya has the flower market from Tuesday to Sunday, but on Mondays it becomes the brocante, with around a hundred and eighty antiques stalls from 7am to 6pm. Arrive on a Monday looking for flowers and you will not find them; you will find the largest second-hand market on the Riviera instead.
Away from the seafront: Cimiez, the upper district with the Roman arena and the Matisse Museum inside a 17th-century Genoese villa, twenty minutes by bus; and the Russian Orthodox cathedral of 1912, the largest outside Russia, built with the Tsar's funds for the community that wintered here.
Which to choose
Lyon if food and a city discovered by pushing on doors appeal. Bordeaux if the theme is wine, with the Bordelais châteaux and the Arcachon basin within reach. Nice if you want the sea and accept paying for it. In all three the right months are April-June and September-October, and in all three the gap against high season is fifty or sixty euros a day.