Festival d'Automne

The Autumn Festival is Paris's way of reminding us that there are always endless entertainment options in a great city even when the cold weather steals in. It begins in mid-September and carries its audiences through around three months' worth of intriguing art exhibitions, surprising and beautiful dance performances, conversation-fuelling film showings, avant-garde theatre productions and progressive musical experiments, until mid-December, where it drops them again just in time for Christmas. The gaps between the performances and city spaces between the venues encourage periods of thoughtful wandering along boulevards through heaps of Autumn leaves, and indulgent pavement cafe moments of coffee and chat that make you feel like a character in a romantic short film yourself.