Rebecca Engel
Summer gets all the attention, but autumn is when Paris settles back into being itself. The lines at the museums shrink, the light goes soft and low, and the parks turn every shade of gold and rust. Cafe terraces stay open with blankets folded over the chairs, and the calendar fills up with events that only happen once the weather turns.
The list below covers the best things to do in Paris in autumn, from a harvest festival in Montmartre to an all night art show in October. Some of it is tied to specific dates and some of it is simply what the city feels like between September and November. Either way, it’s a good time to go.
1. Watch The Leaves Turn In The Luxembourg Gardens
The Luxembourg Gardens are good year round, and they’re at their best in October. The chestnut trees along the central paths go copper, and the green metal chairs that were fought over all summer sit empty.
Kids still sail the little wooden boats on the pond even when it’s cold. The palace sits at one end looking serious, and the gravel paths fill with leaves that nobody rushes to clear away.
Bring a coffee and take a chair facing the water. It’s free, it opens early, and it’s one of the simplest things to do in Paris in autumn.
2. Get Inside Buildings That Are Usually Locked
For one weekend in mid September, hundreds of buildings across Paris open their doors for free. It’s called Journees du Patrimoine, or Heritage Days, and it covers places you can’t normally walk into at all.
That means government palaces, private mansions, working theaters, and the occasional embassy. Some of them aren’t open to the public on any other weekend of the year.
Lines form early at the famous ones, so pick two or three smaller sites rather than chasing the presidential palace. The official list goes up a few weeks ahead, and it’s worth reading before you plan the day.
3. Buy Roasted Chestnuts From A Street Cart
Once the temperature drops, the chestnut carts appear. They set up near the busy metro exits and along the main shopping streets, and you’ll smell one before you spot it.
A paper cone costs a couple of euros and stays warm in your hands for the length of a good walk. The shells are messy and the nuts are sweet, and it’s the most seasonal snack the city has.
They tend to run from October through the holidays. It’s a small thing, and it’s the kind of small thing people remember about a trip.
4. Catch The Harvest Festival In Montmartre
Montmartre has a working vineyard tucked onto a slope behind the Sacre Coeur. It’s tiny, it’s been there for about a century, and every October the neighborhood throws a five day party around the harvest.
Fete des Vendanges fills the streets with food stalls, parades, brass bands, and a great deal of wine. The vineyard itself opens for the occasion, which almost never happens the rest of the year.
It usually lands in the second week of October. Go on a weekday if crowds bother you, because the weekend gets packed shoulder to shoulder.
5. Stay Out Late For Nuit Blanche
One Saturday night in early October, Paris stays awake on purpose. Nuit Blanche turns the whole city into a free all night art show, with installations in museums, churches, metro stations, and the middle of the street.
Some of it is strange and some of it is genuinely beautiful. Museums that normally shut at six stay open until dawn, and the metro runs later than usual to move everyone between neighborhoods.
Pick one area and walk it rather than trying to see everything. The map is always bigger than a single night.
6. Duck Into The Covered Passages When It Rains
Paris built glass roofed shopping arcades in the 1800s, and around twenty of them are still standing. They were the original answer to a rainy afternoon and they still work perfectly well.
Galerie Vivienne has mosaic floors and a good bookshop. Passage des Panoramas is narrower and messier, packed with stamp dealers and small restaurants. Passage Jouffroy hides a toy shop and an entire hotel inside it.
Most of them sit between the Louvre and the Grands Boulevards, so you can string three or four together without stepping outside for long. Autumn is exactly the weather they were built for.
7. Climb Up To Parc Des Buttes Chaumont
Buttes Chaumont is the park Parisians head to when they want a hill. It sits up in the nineteenth, well away from the tourist center, and it was built out of an old quarry.
There’s a lake, a small temple perched on a cliff, a suspension bridge, and slopes steep enough to make the walk feel like something. In autumn the whole bowl of it goes orange.
Rosa Bonheur, the cafe inside the park, is a neighborhood institution. On a clear afternoon its terrace is one of the better places in the city to sit and do nothing.
8. Order The Hot Chocolate At Angelina
Angelina has been serving the same hot chocolate on Rue de Rivoli since 1903. It’s thick enough to coat a spoon and it arrives with a small jug of whipped cream you add yourself.
It isn’t cheap and the line can be long, especially on weekends. A weekday morning usually gets you a table in under twenty minutes.
If the wait looks bad, the tea room at the Musee Jacquemart Andre does a similar job with a fraction of the people. Either one beats standing around in the cold.
9. Eat Oysters Now That They’re Back In Season
French tradition says to eat oysters in months with an R in them, which puts the season squarely in autumn. From September onward they start showing up on brasserie tables all over the city.
Look for the seafood counters set up on the sidewalk outside the older brasseries, usually with someone in an apron shucking to order. A half dozen with bread and butter makes a normal light lunch here.
The covered markets do the same thing for less money. It’s one of the most reliably good things to do in Paris in autumn, and it costs less than people expect.
10. Walk Pere Lachaise In The Fog
Pere Lachaise is a cemetery the size of a small neighborhood, with cobbled lanes, old chestnut trees, and around seventy thousand graves. It’s beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with being cheerful.
Autumn is when it looks most like itself. Leaves cover the paths, the light stays low all day, and the crowds heading for Jim Morrison thin out enough that you can hear birds.
Grab a map at the entrance, because the layout makes very little sense otherwise. Give it two hours and let yourself get a bit lost.
11. Shop The Markets For Autumn Produce
Paris runs open air markets in nearly every arrondissement, and what’s piled on the tables changes completely once autumn starts. Mushrooms take over, along with squash, apples, figs, and chestnuts by the sack.
Cepes are the ones to look for. They turn up for a few weeks in September and October, they cost a small fortune, and half the stalls will have them stacked in baskets out front.
Marche Bastille on Thursday and Sunday is the big one. Marche d’Aligre is smaller, cheaper, and open most mornings of the week.
12. Go To The Chocolate Fair
Salon du Chocolat lands at the end of October, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Chocolate makers from all over set up in one hall, and most of them are handing out samples.
There are demonstrations, sculptures made entirely of chocolate, and a fashion show where the outfits are also made of chocolate. It’s a lot, and it’s good fun.
Tickets sell online ahead of time and the weekend gets busy. Going on the first day usually means shorter lines at the better stalls.
13. Spend An Afternoon At The Jardin Des Plantes
The Jardin des Plantes is the city’s botanical garden, and it handles autumn better than most of the parks. The tree rows are planted in straight lines, so the color reads all at once from the top of the main path.
There’s a natural history museum at one end, a small zoo, and greenhouses for when the weather turns. The alpine garden is easy to walk past and worth finding.
It sits along the Seine in the fifth, near the mosque, whose tea room serves mint tea and pastries for very little money.
14. See Something At The Palais Garnier
The opera season starts back up in autumn, and the Palais Garnier is worth walking into whether or not you care about opera. The grand staircase alone justifies a ticket.
Cheap seats exist and they’re genuinely cheap, though some come with a restricted view. The ceiling was painted by Chagall and you can see it from almost anywhere in the hall.
If nothing on the schedule fits, the building runs daytime tours instead. It makes a good rainy afternoon.
15. Get Into The Museums Before The Lines Come Back
The best practical reason to come in autumn is that the queues shrink. The Orsay, the Orangerie, and the Pompidou all go from an hour outside to more or less walking in.
The Orangerie is the one people skip and shouldn’t. Monet’s water lilies fill two oval rooms built specifically for them, and in autumn you can sit on the bench in the middle without being crowded.
Book the Orsay online anyway. Most Paris museums close on either Monday or Tuesday, so check before building a whole day around one.
16. Try Beaujolais Nouveau On Release Night
On the third Thursday in November the year’s Beaujolais is released at midnight, and half the bars in Paris make an event of it. Signs go up in the windows reading le Beaujolais nouveau est arrive.
The wine is young, light, and not meant to be taken too seriously. That’s rather the point of the evening.
Neighborhood wine bars do this better than the tourist spots. Anywhere around the eleventh will be busy and cheerful by nine o’clock.
17. Walk The Versailles Gardens Before The Fountains Shut Off
Versailles is a forty minute train ride, and in autumn the gardens are the reason to go rather than the palace. The formal hedges and long canals look better with color behind them, and the tour buses have thinned out.
The musical fountain shows run into late October before stopping for winter. Check the schedule first, because the fountains only play on certain days.
The gardens are free on most days when the fountains aren’t running. Rent a bike or a rowboat on the Grand Canal if the weather holds up.
What To Know About Visiting Paris In Autumn
Autumn weather here is mild and wet. September still feels like summer most years, October is the sweet spot, and by November it’s grey and cold enough to want a proper coat.
Pack layers, something waterproof, and shoes you can put ten thousand steps on. An umbrella helps more than a hood does, and the rain rarely lasts all day.
Prices drop after the August rush and climb again around the holidays, so October is usually the cheapest month to both fly and sleep. Anything tied to a fixed date, like the harvest festival or the chocolate fair, should be checked before flights get booked.
Final Thoughts
Paris in autumn asks less of you than Paris in summer does. Shorter lines, softer light, and a calendar full of things that only happen once the leaves start dropping.
Pick a few of these things to do in Paris in autumn and leave some room around them. The unplanned afternoons tend to be the ones people talk about later.
