Where To Go After Paris

Rouen, for the medieval streets and Joan of Arc

Rouen is about an hour and ten minutes from Paris by train, and it has one of the best-preserved clusters of half-timbered medieval houses in France, particularly around the Gros-Horloge street. Joan of Arc was tried and executed here, and the city takes that history seriously without being maudlin about it, marked with a modest church on the site of the burning rather than anything overwrought.

The Gothic cathedral, painted repeatedly by Monet, is worth circling slowly to see how the light changes on the facade, which is exactly what he was doing in that series. A day trip works, but an overnight lets you catch the old town lit up in the evening once the tour groups have gone.

Reims, for champagne and the coronation cathedral

Reims is around 45 minutes from Paris on the fast train, which makes it one of the easier day trips on this list, though the champagne houses reward more time than a single afternoon allows. Most French kings were crowned in Reims cathedral, and the building's scale reflects that historical weight.

Book a cellar tour in advance at one of the major houses, since walk-ins are often turned away during busy periods, and pace yourself if you're planning to visit more than one house in a day.

Chartres, for one of the great cathedrals of Europe

Chartres is about an hour from Paris and built almost entirely around a single, extraordinary structure: its cathedral, largely intact since the 13th century, with stained glass that survived both world wars because it was removed and stored for safekeeping. The blue in that glass has a name among art historians, Chartres blue, because nobody has fully explained how the medieval glassmakers achieved it.

The town around the cathedral is small and quiet, which makes it a good half-day trip if your main goal is simply standing inside that nave for a while.

Lille and Amiens, further afield but worth it

Lille sits close enough to the Belgian border that its architecture leans distinctly Flemish, brick facades and stepped gables that look more like Belgium than the rest of France. It's about an hour from Paris and makes a good final stop before crossing into Belgium if your trip continues that way.

Amiens has its own vast Gothic cathedral, actually the largest in France by volume, plus a network of floating market gardens along the Somme that few visitors from Paris ever hear about. Both cities work well as an overnight rather than a rushed day trip, since neither reveals much in three hours.

Building a route out of these

These five don't have to be visited in isolation. Rouen and Amiens sit roughly in the same northwestern direction and can be chained together before continuing toward the Channel coast. Reims and Chartres sit on opposite sides of Paris, so combining them in one loop means backtracking through the capital, which is fine given how frequent the trains are.

A reasonable plan is Paris for four or five days, then two or three of these cities at a night or two each, using Paris as the hub you return to before flying home.

• Rouen: 1 hour 10 minutes, half-timbered old town and Monet's cathedral
• Reims: 45 minutes, champagne cellars and the coronation cathedral
• Chartres: 1 hour, one of Europe's best-preserved Gothic cathedrals
• Lille: 1 hour, Flemish-influenced brick architecture near the Belgian border
• Amiens: 1 hour 10 minutes, France's largest cathedral by volume