The loveliest (and ugliest) towns in France, according to our expert

Some 35 years of travelling up and down France has taught me a thing or two: that you have only a 50 per cent chance of having your ticket checked on the TGV; that young French drivers are the most dangerous; and that, if you’re going to eat in a motorway service station, you’re better off with the hot special of the day.

The most important lesson, though, is that France is best experienced in small towns. Big cities are vivid – full of museums, cathedrals and specialist macaroon outlets – but also stressful. Great to visit, and great to get out of. France’s villages are justly celebrated for their bakers, butchers and sense of self-sufficiency. But they may well be shut down by 7.30pm.

By contrast, the small town – say, from around 10,000- to around 50,000-strong – will offer food and drink at 10pm and stuff to explore, all without overwhelming. People will be used to outsiders and are usually pretty welcoming. At the very least, they’ll apologise if they bump you off the pavement.

My list of favourite small towns – the most attractive among them – evolves constantly. By “most attractive”, I don’t really mean “prettiest”. Prettiness alone can be fatal, bringing in potters and ceramists when you need grocers. To be attractive, a small town also needs to have character, one or more stories and the sense that it lives well whether visitors show up or not.

Here are my present favourites.

10. St Omer, Pas-de-Calais

Population: 14,661

St Omer has had such a tough time of late – floods last winter, an arson attack on the Church of the Immaculate Conception in September – that the place merits our consideration. Fortunately, it is easy to give. This is a small town, firstly, of dignity. See the soaring ruins of the St Bertin abbey or the huge stepped façade of the former Jesuit college. Next door, the equally imposing 16th-century monument served as the English Jesuit College educating Catholic boys denied schooling at home.

These days, it still houses a school – the Lycée Alexandre Ribot – but also the extraordinarily dignified public library, whose abundant treasures include copies of the Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s First Folio.

As this indicates, St Omer is, secondly, well endowed in culture. Its Sandelin museum is presently big on Japanese themes, the Italian theatre is as richly ornate as any Italian might require, and the cathedral hosts a fine Deposition by Rubens. Also a 16th-century astrolabe clock. More movingly, it contains the tomb of St Erkembode, the eighth-century Irish bishop of the locality, who walked around his diocese so much that he ended up almost paralysed. Logically, he became the saint beseeched by parents of children with walking difficulties. Thus, his tomb is covered in tiny shoes, left as hope, or thanks, for his intervention.

And thirdly, St Omer is a spot of terrific taste. You need beef carbonnade or the three- or four-meat potjevleesch with shipping quantities of chips? You’re in the right place. The local beers undoubtedly help. Try those from the Abbaye de Clairmarais brewery.

To stay

Head for the dependable, and central, Mercure Saint Omer (doubles from £82).

9. St Malo, Brittany

Population: 48,233

St Malo was named after a Welsh holy man, Maclou. The port made its money – heaps of it; Louis XIV called in for loans – through trade with the Indies and Americas, and big-time freebooting, essentially against English interests. As you’d expect of Welsh inspiration.

We exacted revenge when the Allied bombing wrecked the place in 1944 (Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning All the Light We Cannot See paints the picture). But, and here’s the thing, the granite city has been put back together within its ramparts with terrific panache. Walk the 1.2-mile walls and note the dense labyrinth of dressed stone speaking of ancestral power, wealth and skulduggery. The vast château oversees. It’s now a pretty good regional history museum.

Beyond, there’s sea on three sides, fine beaches rife with sand-yachts and rocky islets apparently crumbled into place. One bears the Fort National, another the grave of local writer Châteaubriand.

Back in town are bars and restaurants sufficient to anyone’s conviviality needs, notably if those needs include seafood. Next time you exit the ferry here, stick around instead of blasting off somewhere else. You’ll thank me.

To stay

The Quic en Groigne is a small, well-placed and eminently welcoming three-star hotel (doubles from £72).

8. Amboise, Loire Valley

Population: 12,938

High above the wide, wild, idling Loire, Amboise Château gives anyone – monarchs, visitors, anyone at all – aspirations of sovereignty. Spend time up here and you’d assume a manifest destiny to be ruling, at least, France. A couple of Louises, a brace of Charleses and two Françoises established the pattern, moving in and out of Amboise, occasionally stomping off to subdue Italians and bring the Renaissance home with them.

François I brought Leonardo da Vinci back – Leonardo travelled on a donkey, with the Mona Lisa in a saddlebag – and installed him across town in the Clos Lucé manor house. Both brick-built manor and gardens are now lively with evocations of inventions he came up with centuries before anyone else. He was a great believer in weapons of mass destruction – tanks, machine guns – but also foresaw flying machines, parachutes, the bevel trundle change speed system and the car jack, among much else.

Then you might wander around the oatmeal-hued little town, bathed in soft light and reflected grandeur, both royal and fluvial. The old streets are bright with gift and eating possibilities. Should time permit an outing in a traditional riverboat, don’t hesitate. It’s gentle, serene and instructive. I’d go with Millière Raboton just along the river at Chaumont (milliere-raboton.net).

To stay

The manorial Clos d’Amboise is good preparation for the stately piles you’re going to be visiting (doubles from £95).

7. Beaune, Burgundy

Population: 20,032

Beaune is steeped in ancestral plumpness, at the southern end of the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune – together, the greatest stretch of fine-wine slopes in Europe. Well-aged, white-stoned streets offer more opportunities to eat jambon persillé, Chaource cheese and beef bourguignon than a strong-willed man can long resist.

Well-being abounds and, fittingly, Burgundy’s wine capital is built on wine – literally: millions of bottles slumber in underground cellars. Visit Bouchard Ainé et Fils to see how this works, and taste some results. The full story – of land, men and wines – is now told at the recently opened Cité des Climats et Vins de Bourgogne. The startlingly circular building seems to be winding round itself. Inside, the centre explains that climats are what Burgundians call specific stretches of wine land – and goes on from there to tell the full tale in contemporary fashion.

Then you need to see the 15th-century Hotel Dieu, a vast hospital for the poor built on the scale of a Flemish cathedral, a rich sinner’s monumental bid to get into heaven. Built around a courtyard, it’s as masterful and ornate as any medical establishment anywhere. The multicoloured, geometrically designed roof is unarguably the most memorable roof in France and, within, Rogier van der Weyden’s Last Judgment polyptych probably provided less comfort than the patients required. Visitors will also see enema syringes the size of petrol pumps, indicating that the good old days had their downside.

To stay

The voco Beaune looks (and is) brand new, near the equally new Cité des Climats et Vins de Bourgogne; doubles from £87).

6. Bergerac, Dordogne

Population: 25,774

You can’t disassociate Bergerac from fleshly pleasures. You truly wouldn’t want to. For a start, the Dordogne’s second town has France’s only tobacco museum. This covers the Dordogne’s weed-farming history, but also the entire 3,000-year tobacco story. Learn, among much else, that in tsarist Russia smokers had their lips cut off; in Persia their noses; in China their heads.

Secondly, as a south-west wine capital, the place has a new and groovy Maison des Vins. The wine bar slots into a 17th-century Franciscan Recollects monastery, overlooking the river. Sipping Bergerac wines and chatting on the evening-tide terrace makes even slobs seem civilised. And, thirdly, the products of south-west French farming – foie gras, duck confit, truffled this and that – flow into the market and restaurants from the surrounding Dordogne countryside. (My favourite duck dish is found at young cheffe Klo’s L’Authentik – battered pulled-duck balls with spiced gravy).

Bergerac tells its own tale in sinuous streets too narrow for two fat friars, wonky half-timbering and Renaissance townhouses, all descending to the Dordogne river, which ferried Bergerac wines to the world.

To stay

The Hotel de Bordeaux, the oldest in town, is practical and comes with unsuspected gardens and very pleasant staff (doubles from £57).

5. Annecy, Haute-Savoie, Alps

Population: 49,232

The image the world retains of Annecy is, well, as a spot too picturesque for postcards. Quite right, too. Here is an atmospheric squeeze of waterways, arcades and beflowered bridges, with greensward and a lake out front, Alps all around. There’s the château – once residence of the Counts of Geneva – and the monumental Impérial Palace hotel, once host to George VI, Churchill and Chaplin. Lakes, mountains and stone towns do go so well together.

By contrast, what I retain of Annecy is the basilica at the top of the town. In a copper reliquary lies St François de Sales, the patron saint of journalists. I also retain the difficulty of manoeuvring a motor home – essentially, a trundling bungalow – round paved streets designed for donkeys.

And, thirdly – most importantly – I retained that, whatever else is happening in Annecy, there is tartiflette round every corner. That alone qualifies the town as Premier League.

To stay

Five minutes from the lake and well placed for the town centre, the Allobroges Park Hotel is a decent Annecy base (doubles from £67).

4. Mende, Lozère, Occitanie

Population: 12,316

I fell for Mende shortly after falling for one of its young women. First, we roamed the stirring country of France’s emptiest quarter: high, wild, remote, boasting a wolf park and a future mother-in-law, but otherwise forgiving. Then we dropped down to Mende, the bite-sized county capital. The doughty grey town crams in along the River Lot and around a gigantic Gothic cathedral (ordered by local lad Pope Urban V), which rises like a cardinal among curates.

Tight streets throng with ruddy-faced folk in from mountain villages for the market, other shopping, admin, schools, sport and to meet people to whom they’re not related. As recently noted, Mende has ever been a tough town of essentials but, in the past 20 years, has opened and brightened. Shops and streets look as if they’ve arrived in the 21st century, the Hyper U hypermarket has the best-displayed cheese section of any I know and is no slouch, either, in charcuterie.

Things move on but the past remains present, not least on the sheerest of the hills looming over the town. Up top is the hermitage of martyr St Privat. He was rolled down the cliff in a barrel pierced with nails by barbarians. They were under the command of a chap called Crocus. In short, it’s as well to treat the place with respect.

To stay

Make directly for the Hôtel de France, its 21st-century comfort slotted into an 18th-century townhouse (doubles from £99).

3. Hyères, Var, Provence

Population: 55,370

As often as I can, I lunch at a beachside restaurant just outside Hyères. I order John Dory and a bottle of rosé. The sands slope to the sea under a sky drenched in off-season light boundlessly clear. Meal over, I ask the waiter if I may linger over the last of the wine – for, maybe, the next 25 years?

The Provençal coast of the Var département causes the heart to leap. Mountains edge the Mediterranean in a last burst of rocks and forest, here and there granting creeks and beaches. Hyères is the best base. For a start, it’s full of palm trees – always a cheering prospect. Climbing steeply up and over itself, the warren of old streets is as feisty as a Provençal town should be.

The resort was the first in France to get the hang of top-end foreign tourism – before Nice, Cannes or Biarritz. Rich and titled folk from northern climes rolled in for the mild winters from the late 18th century, initially for the good of their health.

Queen Victoria, a fan, led elite Britons in. They considered it wonderful. They required golf courses, tennis courts, tearooms, reading rooms and three Anglican churches, not to mention British doctors, dentists and pharmacies. Artists and writers – Huxley, Kipling, Conrad, especially Edith Wharton – were thick on the ground. Others in the 1920s and 1930s gathered at the Villa Noailles, a hyperrational combination of white cubes at the top of the town. You may visit to celebrate Klee, Cocteau, Braque, Dalí and Buñuel.

To stay

Head for the boutique (14-room) Hôtel Le Méditerranée, near the port. It does its job well (doubles from £70).

2. Figeac, Lot, Occitanie

Population: 9,741

Travellers crossing the Quercy limestone plateau have been dropping down to the Célé river and crossing to Figeac for a thousand years or more. They still do, now with added delight, for it’s been a close-run thing. In the mid-1950s – when insanity was the norm in urban planning – the old centre was to be swept away in favour of the motor car. At the last moment, France got the hang of heritage. The historical structures of French living and working, from medieval trading days through the Renaissance, were buffed up, rather than pulled down.

People moved back into the old town. Resuscitation ensued. Thus one may still stroll the alleys and stone streetlets, stone-arched shop façades, open-fronted attics and cat-lurking crannies, to the sound of uncertain flute practice from an open 17th-century window. Also of citizen greeting citizen as they head for the Place Carnot market.

Right next door, Figeac’s most esteemed son, Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, the cracker of hieroglyphics, has inspired a first-rate museum covering the history of writing, from cuneiform onwards. Nearby, a black granite reproduction of the Rosetta stone covers a discreet courtyard.

To stay

Try the Hôtel Le Quatorze – small, independent, charming and excellent value for money (doubles from £64).

1. St Jean de Luz, Basque Country, Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Population: 14,601

Centuries ago, St Jean – the thinking person’s Biarritz, the finest Atlantic seaside town in France – grew rich from whaling, cod fishing and sending out corsairs to annoy English shipping. Subsequently, it’s ceded to sea-sidery, but not much. The fishing port still bustles and clanks, landing fish, not billionaires. Beyond, the curve of the Grande Plage fulfils every safe and summer promise. Farther on, rollers chuck surfers about, so that the distant Mediterranean seems almost decadent by comparison.

But there’s a parallel strength in the town. Pedestrian streets have shops you need, among substantial white houses harbouring generations. There’s no doubt to whom this place belongs, and it’s not the visitors. These have, incidentally, included Louis XIV. He was here in 1660, marrying the Spanish Infanta Maria Theresa in the Church of St John the Baptist – which is pretty much as it was, at 11 Rue de l’Eglise. Crowned heads rolled in during the belle époque, when the Basque coast was A-list central. Later, Ravel wrote his Bolero across the way in Ciboure.

Graceful echoes remain, lending a sheen to what Basques are really good at: eating, drinking late, talking tuna and rugby, betting on pelota, wearing berets, making cheese and ham, and fostering family ties which straddle the globe. Most Basque tribes have a Latin American president somewhere in their family tree.

To stay

Once a St Jean institution, the Madison hotel was reborn in 2018 and is elegant and as welcoming as before (doubles from £123).

Five not-so-lovely towns

Please understand: because a place isn’t pretty, it doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting and shouldn’t be visited. Often, the exact opposite obtains. I come from industrial Lancashire; I know this to be true. All it means is that the postcards might not be as seductive – and who cares about that?

5. Narbonne Plage

The Languedoc coast came late to the holiday business – late, that is, relative to the Provençal coast and Riviera. So resorts such as Narbonne Plage tend to have a quick-build 1960s aspect. Apartment blocks of no overwhelming beauty jostle with shacks and retail buildings (“nuggets de poulet!”, “pizzas au mètre,” “fusion fashions!”) of permanent impermanence. Frankly, Narbonne Plage is great for a family holiday, but quaint, it ain’t.

4. Alès

Another spot still not quite recovered from the end of coal-mining prosperity. Like Decazeville, you bump into Alès in deeply bucolic surroundings – it’s often termed the “capital of the Cévennes mountains”. But redevelopment ravages have not done it too many favours. It’s interesting to visit but I doubt you’ll want to stay.

3. Decazeville

The Aveyron is an admirably rural county, until you get to Decazeville, which had the historical good luck to be on a rich coal seam – followed by bad luck when the seam became unviable. The town still looks a little dazed, as if it’s not quite recovered from the economic blow.

2. Dunkirk

The great port city has a long, long beach and a heroic history – the two are, of course, associated – but the town has been put back together a little uncertainly after war-time devastation. And the presence of quite so much industry – steel, petrol, electricity – on the fringes doesn’t make it any more picturesque.

1. Fos-sur-Mer

It’s on the Mediterranean, north west of Marseille, so it should be lovely, right? Not really. The old village is pretty much swamped by one of Europe’s biggest industrial zones – refineries and steel plants – which are neither aesthetically pleasing nor, on a bad day, do they smell too good.