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The 100 Best Things to Do in France

The best things to do in France, according to the experts: The 50, the Forbes Travel Guide, and the World's 50 Beaches have all weighed in, and their honors are what rank this list. Château Smith Haut Lafitte comes out on top, and the good stuff runs deepest in Paris.

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Maison Ruinart and Château d'Yquem hold the next two places. Le Fooding shows up on more of this list than any other guide, with The 50 next.

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  1. The grapes here are picked berry by berry, by hand, across multiple passes through the vines, because a whole cluster would be too imprecise for what Château d'Yquem is trying to do. A visit to this Sauternes estate means walking vineyards given over to noble rot, the peculiar fungus that concentrates the juice into something its devotees treat less like wine and more like evidence. It ranks ninth on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list.


  2. Bollinger still farms two tiny plots in Aÿ that somehow escaped the phylloxera blight that wiped out most of Europe's vines, and the ultra-rare Vieilles Vignes Françaises made from them is what people make pilgrimages for. The house is pinot-dominant, aged in oak, and carries a particular richness you either find thrilling or a bit much. It placed fifteenth on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, which tracks.



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    Address
    61 Rue de la Combe, 84220 Gordes, France · Gordes
    Hours

    Closed now, opens 10 AM

    Wednesday 10 AM–8 PM

    Online
    Website
  4. Harvesting grapes in the cool of the night gives these Provençal rosés their famously pale hue, and that kind of care runs through everything at Château de Berne. The estate spreads across nearly a thousand hectares of Var forest, with vineyards, olive groves, a vinotherapy spa, and two restaurants, one holding a Michelin star. It lands at number 43 on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, which feels about right once you've seen the place.


  5. A crescent of pale sand cupped by hills thick with maquis, Santa Giulia sits just outside Porto-Vecchio on Corsica's southern coast. The lagoon-like bay stays shallow and calm well out from shore, which makes it unusually good for swimming. Ranked among Europe's and the world's top beaches, it draws a crowd that wants both the scenery and the amenities, and the beach delivers both without apology.


  6. The cellars here run 18 metres underground through fourth-century chalk quarries beneath the ruins of a Benedictine abbey, which sets a certain tone before you've opened anything. Taittinger is one of the few grand Champagne houses still family-run and open to visitors, and the guided tour winds past WWI graffiti and riddlers hand-rotating bottles by the old method. Sommeliers lead the tasting at the end. It ranks on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list.



  7. The Avenue de Champagne is essentially a two-mile flex, and Moët et Chandon's headquarters sits near the center of it. This is a cellar tour and tasting experience at one of Champagne's great old houses, where kilometers of chalk caves run beneath the estate and the bar pours cocktails, rare vintages, and snacks to go with them. A Discovery on The World's 50 Best Vineyards list.


  8. Seven generations of the same family have been tending these Côtes de Nuits vines, and the current siblings run the domaine with the quiet intensity of people who grew up hearing about soil composition at the dinner table. A visit here is a deep dive into Burgundian terroir, with grapes hand-sorted and aged in French oak the old way. The World's 50 Best Vineyards list has them at number 59.



  9. The spa at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc puts Dior skincare on a cliffside above the Mediterranean, which is frankly an unfair level of setting for a facial. Treatments follow the Dior Prestige line, the therapists work without hurry, and the whole operation is quieter than the famous pool just outside. Named among Vogue's 100 best spas in the world, it draws the kind of guests who've already seen everything and still seem genuinely calmed by the end.


  10. Dior's name is on the door, and the address is Avenue Montaigne, so the skincare here arrives with a certain theatrical confidence. This is a luxury hotel spa on one of Paris's most dressed-up streets, freshly renovated and built around Dior's own beauty line. Fashion Week regulars treat it as a necessary decompression chamber between shows, which tells you roughly who's on the next table and what they've been through.


  11. Tucked beneath the Place Vendôme side of the building, the Ritz's underground spa is the kind of place that makes you feel slightly guilty for sweating in it. The marble and gilded detailing carry straight through from the hotel above, which is either reassuring or surreal depending on your relationship with luxury. Vogue named it among the 100 best spas in the world, which tracks.



  12. The spa at Le Bristol runs on La Mer products, which sets the tone before anyone touches you. Tucked inside one of Paris's grande dame hotels on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, it is exactly as hushed and gilded as that address implies. The treatments lean into La Mer's signature marine formulas, and the estheticians are trained to deliver something slower and more immersive than your average hotel rubdown.




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    Address
    10 Pl. de la Concorde, 75008 Paris, France · Paris
    Hours

    Closed now, opens 9 AM

    Wednesday 9 AM–9 PM

    Online
    WebsiteInstagram
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    Address
    145 Rue de la Poste, 73150 Val-d'Isère, France · Val-d'Isère
    Hours

    Closed now, opens 9 AM

    Wednesday 9 AM–9 PM

    Online
    Website
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  22. Pagodas and elephant statues rise over the Saint-Estèphe vines, which tells you this is not a typical Médoc château visit. The estate's founder came back from trading in Oman with a taste for the East, and the architecture never let anyone forget it. Tours move through the gravity-fed cellar built into the château walls, where some of the most talked-about wines in Bordeaux are made. Book ahead; they mean it.



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Eat Score

The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

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    Drink Score

    The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

      How we score →

      Stay Score

      Four fifths of the score is the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin Key outweighs a listicle. The last fifth is where it is: the ranked places to eat and things to do around it, and how safe the country is. When you sort by what's nearby, distance from you changes the order, never the score.

        How we score →

        Do Score

        The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

          How we score →

          Best Place Score

          The Best Place Score rates the area around a point, not any one place. The places are 60% of it: the best of what's within reach, weighed by distance. The setting is the other 40%: how life goes in that country (how people rate their own lives, how long and how well they live, how safe they are) and what it's like right there (the air, and the weather). If the score looks low, we probably haven't found enough critics out here yet.

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