10 reasons to return to the world's most visited country in 2018
There is plenty to lure travellers back to France, the most visited country on the planet, in 2018. Anthony Peregrine offers a guide.
1. Delacroix at the Louvre, Paris
March 29-July 23, 2018
It's a wall-filler of a work, one of France's feistiest by her most fascinating 19th-century artist, but Liberty Leading The People - phrygian cap, tri-colour flag, bare breasts, dead bodies - is scarcely the whole Eugene Delacroix story. That's coming to the Louvre in March with the first proper retrospective of his work in five decades. Backed also by the New York Met, it will cover his early Romantic period through to later landscapes and more mysterious religious works. As luck would have it, the exhibition overlaps with a chronologically similar show starring the Dutch in Paris during the 19th and early 20th-centuries at the Petit Palais. It's a species of dialogue pitting the likes of Van Gogh and Mondrian against Cézanne and Monet.
Location: Louvre, Rue de Rivoli; Petit Palais, Ave Winston Churchill
2. Ryder Cup
September 25-30 2018
The most prestigious team event in world golf - perhaps the most popular biennial sporting event on the planet - comes to France for the first time in September. The Europeans, under captain Thomas Bjorn, will be trying to wrest the cup from the Jim Furyk-led Americans, victors in 2016. It will all be happening at the Golf National at St Quentin-les-Yvelines, 20 miles SW of Paris. "My favourite course in Europe," Lee Westwood has called it. They're expecting up to 70,000 spectators. Book early (rydercup.com).
Location: St Quentin-les-Yvelines
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3. Musée de la Romanité, N?mes
Opens June 2, 2018
At last, N?mes gets the museum which its status as France's greatest Roman town merits. The ￡53-million musée - its ceramic and glass fa?ades ripple like a stack of paper, with openings like winking eyes - faces the town's mighty 1st-century arena. Though two millennia apart, the pair complement each other fine. Within what has been France's major contemporary architectural project, permanent exhibits will track N?mes' story, from 6th-century BC Gaulish origins, via the key Roman period to the middle ages. It kicks off with a temporary show about gladiators, to Sept 24.
Location: Blvd Amiral Courbet
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4. French Grand Prix, Le Castellet
June 24, 2018
Formula One racing roars back into France after a 10-year absence - and about time, too: this is the country in which Grand Prix racing originated, whence the name. The GP returns not to Magny-Cours, its last home, but to the much more accessible Le Castellet in Provence and the historic Circuit Paul Ricard (named after the drinks magnate behind its construction). Talking of drinks, Le Castellet is bang in Bandol red wine country. You know where your duty lies.
Location: Le Castellet
5. Centenary of the end of the First World War
Throughout the year
Four years of throat-catching commemorations culminate in 2018 with a multitude of events marking the centenary of the Great War's last year. Key among them will be, on April 26 (the day after Anzac day), the opening of the ￡57 million Sir John Monash centre at Villers-Bretonneux, recalling the extraordinary efforts made by 295,000 Australian troops on the Western front. May 27 sees the American Expeditionary Force celebrated at Bois-de-Belleau (near Chateau Thierry) where, in their first real engagement, US Marines performed a crucial 1918 counter-attack. Later, over in Amiens on August 8, the leading Allied nations, plus Germany, gather to commemorate the final offensive which led, on November 11, to the German surrender. That took place in rail-car in Compiègne, where the renewed Armistice Museum reopens in March. And the November 11 armistice will, of course, be celebrated nationally, President Emmanuel Macron inviting to Paris the heads of 80 nations involved in the Great War.
6. Baby panda
From January 13, 2018
He was born on August 4 last year so small (five ounces) as to be barely visible, was christened in the presence of Brigitte Macron in December and will be on show to the public from January 13. You'd better believe that Yuan Meng ("realisation of a dream") is the main attraction of Beauval Zoo in the Loire valley and, without much doubt, France's star animal right now. He's also absurdly cute, if also a little irascible, and surrounded by hundreds of other animal species in the nation's #1 zoo. While in the Loire valley, incidentally, look up the chateau at Azay-le-Rideau, the 16th-century treasure recently renewed and restored to former splendour.
Location: Beauval Zoo, St Aignan
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7. Fêtes Constellation, Metz
June 28-Sept 16, 2018
Hardly anyone goes to Metz, in NE France - a big mistake. It's a fine city of yellow-stone monuments, gardens and masterful military memories. And it will be better yet this summer when the Constellation Festival strikes up, bringing with it a superb light and sound show ("mapping video") on the outstanding Gothic cathedral, street art and sculpture circuits round the town and a plethora of dance, theatre, music, circus and poetry events every weekend. All that plus, at the Pompidou Centre's magnificent satellite museum in Metz, a Modern Couples temporary show dedicated to creative couples like Picasso and Dora Maar, Robert and Sonia Delaunay or Man Ray and Lee Miller.
Location: Metz
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8. Music in Lyon
May 6-13; June and July
Of France's biggest provincial cities, I'd say Lyon is presently the most energetic. Witness new bars and galleries, the Confluence museum and, in May, the Nuits Sonores, during which electro music breaks out in 40 locations all over town. It's now among Europe's finest music festivals (nuits-sonores.com). Then, through June and July the Nuits de Fourvière bring 60 shows - theatre, music, dance, opera, rock'n'roll - to the city's great Roman theatre and odeon. There's magic afoot (nuitsdefourviere.com).
Location: Lyon
9. Calvados Experience, Normandy
Opens March 2018
Calvados - the world's finest apple brandy and among Normandy's greatest gifts to the planet - has waited long enough for a proper museum celebrating its wonderfulness. As from next March, with the opening of the Calvados Experience in Pont-l'Eveque, the wait is over. The "multi-sensory" visit will cover the spirit from its rustic origins - farm-made calva was so fierce that Allied soldiers used it to fuel their stoves during the 1944 battle of Normandy - to its sophisticated present (calvados-pere-magloire.com). Should you be there from July 6-9, don't miss the Festival Beauregard at Hérouville St Clair just down the road. Dépêche Mode headline on July 9 (festivalbeauregard.com).
Location: Normandy
10. Picasso - all over
Throughout the year
It may be that Picasso will be more present among us in 2018 than he was when alive. In Paris, the Picasso Museum majors on Guernica with a show handling the political context, the preparatory sketches and the work's ongoing influence (March 24-July 29). Meanwhile, the vast Picasso-Méditerranée project continues into its second year - of three - in dozens of institutions around the Med (picasso-mediterrannee.org). In France, you'll find headline shows in Antibes, Nice, Céret, Perpignan, Montpellier, Aix, Arles and elsewhere. Two which stand out for me are Picasso and travel - in Marseille's Vieille Charité and MuCEM from Feb 16-June 24 - and "Picasso and Spanish masters" sound and vision show in the Carrières de Lumières quarry at Les Baux-de-Provence. It runs from March 2 all year. If past shows there are anything to go by, this will be extraordinary (carrieres-lumieres.com).
Location: Paris and provinces