Athens
Craggy coves and sandy bays make up the resplendent mix that is the Athens Riviera. So it was that at the end of an autumn day I found myself with a not unpleasant question: where to head to soothe bones still aching for a last splash of summer sun. For Athens offers something that other European cities cannot: a coastline of more than 40 miles dotted with beaches many a Greek island would covet.
Out of season, the shores of Attica still have a magnetic allure, as I discovered when swimming into a fading sun across the bay of Vouliagmeni. For those seeking rejuvenation in marine blue waters primed to turn orange pink as the sun sets, bathing off one of the Riviera’s public or private beaches does not disappoint.
With sea salt still clinging to my skin, I sat at Sardelaki, a tavern whose Mediterranean fare is as good as the spectacular view of the bay it sits on. In a nod to times past, the meze is served on large wooden trays.
Athens is as celebrated for its hills as its coastline: natural elevations within view of the Acropolis that make it a treasure trove for amblers when temperatures are cooler. For those who want to escape a metropolis that sprawls across almost 200 square miles, these rocky outcrops – bearers of fabulous names such as the Hill of the Nymphs and the Hill of the Muses – are a must.
In my view, this ancient capital is also Europe’s most soulful and sublime. If you reach the top of Mount Lycabettus, the city’s highest point, either by foot or on the funicular rail car, the reward is a spectacular vista of the entire Argo-Saronic Gulf and the islands beyond.
If you want to stay centrally, the ancient Plaka district remains the best base. The old-school Adrian hotel has doubles looking on to the northern face of the Acropolis from about £120 B&B. In the same area, Zorbas is a favourite restaurant with locals and serves the most succulent lamb chops. With views of the Acropolis, Athens’ rooftop restaurants are wonderfully atmospheric and perfect for warm autumn evenings – for a real treat head to Kuzina or the Michelin‑starred Macris.
Helena Smith
Palermo
Think Neapolitan margherita is the last word in pizza? Think again. In Palermo they prefer sfincione, a soft, well-risen rectangle of dough topped with intense, onion-heavy tomato sauce and sprinkled with caciocavallo cheese and oregano. Savoury, filling and comforting, it’s sold in bakeries, kiosks and carts all over the city (Via Maqueda in the historic centre usually has several vendors).
We try it at a kiosk on Piazza della Kalsa, near where we’re staying. Panineria Chiluzzo often has long queues, but they move quickly as young staff dish out slices of sfincione, as well as arancini and panelle (chickpea fritters). There are a few tables under the trees outside, but we eat as we walk into town along narrow Via Alloro. This is a pleasant stroll in October but wouldn’t always be. As heatwaves rolled over Europe this year, temperatures in Palermo topped 40C in the shade. At the end of July one sunbaked corner hit a record 70C at ground level.
Now, as temperatures creep to 24C by mid-afternoon, we can wander the city and savour how its long history is written in its streets. Passing baroque and art nouveau palaces, and Casa Stagnitta, the city’s oldest coffee roastery, we take in the Arab-Norman domes of the 12th-century church of San Cataldo; Piazza Pretoria, with its 16th-century fountain, installed under Spanish rule; and the impressive cathedral, built on the location of a ninth-century mosque.
On the way back we detour to Vucciria market, the origins of which also stretch back over 1,000 years. Some decry its touristification, but it is still noisy and brilliantly theatrical. Feeling brave, we stop for a traditional pani câ meusa (spleen roll), which is surprisingly OK, with its slightly sweet “meat” set off by grated cheese. The stallholder is particularly proud of his grilled goat’s intestines but, I’m sorry, no amount of salt and lemon can make those a treat for me.
We’re glad to head back to quieter La Kalsa, the former Arab quarter to the east, which was bombed in the second world war and languished for decades before being revitalised this century. Maison Butera (sea-view doubles from €161 B&B) is a four-room B&B with lots to see nearby. Up the street is Palazzo Butera, a 17th-century baroque pile restored and reopened in 2021 to house the Valsecchi art collection, which includes works by Gilbert & George and Andy Warhol.
Next day we walk 10 minutes to Palermo’s Botanical Garden, with its record-breaking multi-trunk fig tree. Birds are singing their hearts out as the sun pours down. Soon we’ll be in London, the clocks will go back and winter will start. We relish a last week in the light.
Liz Boulter
Vienna
While lamenting the end of summer and hanging out at beach bars and bathing spots on the tributaries of the Danube, I’m now chasing a new hue. Vienna is a city of parks and manicured gardens, meadow sweeps and woodland belts, which swap their emerald halo for a rusty amber and ochre glow the Austrians call Goldener Herbst (golden autumn).
I leave behind the grandiose architecture and cobblestones of the historic centre. South-west of it, Schloss Schönbrunn Park splays from the grand Habsburg summer residence, where the gilt isn’t reserved for the interior, and makes its way into corridors of towering bronzed hedgerows and arched tree terraces that lead to the butter-yellow palace.
To the east, in the city’s Prater Park, I stroll beneath the chestnut trees of the Hauptallee, an avenue that’s almost three miles long and centuries-old. On the edge of the park, the retro-styled Superbude Prater hotel (doubles from €78 B&B) is a perfectly placed retreat.
In a city with hundreds of urban farms (thanks to a long-standing commitment to promoting green spaces and fostering community spirit), autumn brings a feast of fresh produce on menus. Pumpkin cream soup is the seasonal staple – best devoured in a wood-panelled Beisl (Viennese gastropub) such as the art-splashed Am Nordpol 3 – and followed with a Wiener Schnitzel.
Unbeknown to many, Vienna is the only European capital to grow wine within its city limits, with 700 hectares (1,723 acres) of vineyards. There are 14 designated city hiking trails, known as Stadtwanderwege. Track 1 leads you through the vintner lands of Nussdorf. Settle in a hillside Heuriger (wine tavern) such as Wieninger am Nussberg, sipping a citrussy grüner veltliner with a Brettljause (a platter of cold cuts and cheese), while soaking up the sublime city vista.
The days are getting shorter, but now is the perfect time to wander among Vienna’s stately palaces, museums and historic abodes – a cultural crop in gilded gallery wings, mirroring nature’s showcase outside.
Becki Enright
Budapest
After the heat and crowds of high summer, autumn brings a less intense atmosphere to Budapest, and it’s the season I most love to visit the city. The sun mellows, green leaves drain to golden, and a cuisine that’s all about comfort food really comes into its own. Even the Hungarian word for autumn – őszi – has a cosy, laid-back sound to it.
That’s not to say it’s a place to hunker down. Few capitals are better suited to walking, and early autumn promises a Goldilocks sweet spot of temperatures, neither too hot nor too cold. It’s a joy to wander the cobbled streets of the Castle District without sidestepping tourists, to follow the Danube promenade without melting, and to meander among whisky-coloured trees on Margaret Island.
Many of the five-star hotels – such as the wonderfully styled Kimpton BEM and the Dorothea Hotel, with its oasis of a courtyard restaurant – offer affordable shoulder-season deals. But if you don’t need heaps of facilities, try Giselle Vintage Doubles (doubles from €87 room-only), an 18th-century royal mansion near Elizabeth Bridge brimming with yesteryear elegance that is surprisingly light on the wallet.
From here, Budapest is your oyster. I always head to the Central Market Hall, a soaring masterpiece of 19th-century industrial architecture with stalls selling Hungarian products such as rich, sweet tokaji wine and lace tablecloths. The must-visit House of Music Hungary in City Park (itself lovely for an autumn stroll) leads visitors on an absorbing journey through the country’s musical heritage. And nearby Széchenyi baths is a favourite for a soak afterwards: the outdoor pools are particularly atmospheric as the air cools and steam curls from the thermal water.
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There are autumn festivals and events aplenty too. Liszt Fest (9–22 Oct) at the Müpa concert hall celebrates not only works by the Hungarian composer but contemporary music and dance.
Budapest Design Week (8–19 Oct) showcases movers and shakers in jewellery, clothing and art. For something more active, time your visit for the Budapest Marathon weekend (11–12 Oct) or go skating in the shadow of the fairytale Vajdahunyad Castle at the outdoor City Park Ice Rink (opens from mid-November).
But a key draw for me is the delicious comfort food that’s abundant at this time of year: goulash stews, savoury pancakes and paprika sauces aplenty. Café Kör, in an old building with vaulted ceilings, and the retro Menza are longstanding restaurants that serve Hungarian classics. Just leave space for some dobos torte at Gerbeaud, because nothing says autumn like a caramel-topped wedge of sponge cake filled with chocolate buttercream.
Monika Phillips
Zurich
People get the wrong idea about Zurich, and I blame Harold Wilson. In the 1960s, the UK prime minister tried to blame the “gnomes of Zurich” for the pathetic performance of the British pound, and more than 60 years on, some misguided Britons still think of Switzerland’s biggest city as a boring financial destination. They couldn’t be more wrong. Banking is still a major industry, but the city’s tidy, tree-lined streets are full of people having fun.
I’ve been to Zurich more times than I can count, and like it more with each visit. For first timers, the big surprise is the vast and lovely Zürichsee (Lake Zurich), two miles wide, 25 miles long and crisscrossed all day by antique ferries. Wherever you are around town, you’re never far from water.
Another nice surprise is the abundance of fine art. Zurich’s palatial Kunsthaus is one of Europe’s great art galleries (check out the sleek new extension by British starchitect David Chipperfield), but there are also loads of smaller commercial galleries, especially in Zurich West, a former industrial quarter that’s become the city’s new creative hub.
Stay at 25 Hours Zurich West (from 230 Swiss francs/£214 room-only), a funky bolthole in the beating heart of this rejuvenated district or the new cool Mama Shelter (from £175 room-only), which opened in the lively Oerlikon area this summer with a garden terrace overlooking the city and a stylish bar and restaurant.
Zurich has always been a magnet for creatives and eccentrics. James Joyce wrote much of Ulysses here (his grave is in Zurich’s Fluntern cemetery) and his favourite haunt, the chic Café Odeon, is still going strong. The place that sums up Zurich’s rebellious streak is Cabaret Voltaire, the anarchic nightclub where dadaism, the multifaceted modern art movement, was born. The building is still a gallery and performance space, as well as a museum.
When the trees turn golden brown, this compact metropolis looks especially pretty. The best views are from the summit of Uetliberg, on the leafy edge of town. The Uetlibergbahn, Zurich’s mountain railway (which reopens on 5 October after a major refurbishment) takes you within a short walk of the summit.
The Zurich film festival is the one of the autumn highlights, but the most atmospheric spectacle is on the water. From 30 Oct-13 Nov, Zurich’s fleet of pleasure boats hosts the 70th Expovina Weinschiffe, the city’s annual wine fair. Anyone can buy a ticket (from £28) to go onboard and sample a huge range of wines from dozens of different countries (Switzerland’s crisp light whites are seriously underrated). If you’d rather drink beer, head to Bierwerk Züri, a fashionable modern brewery with a youthful clientele.
New restaurants are opening all the time, but my go-tos have both been around for ages and never seem to change. For traditional Swiss cuisine, you can’t beat Alpenrose, a homely historic hideaway a short tram ride from the city centre. For veggie cuisine, Haus Hiltl is a must. The decor is fairly modern and the menu is contemporary, but it was actually founded back in 1898, making it (by some accounts) the oldest vegetarian restaurant in the world.
William Cook
Lyon
Traboules, Lyon’s secret passages, pass through houses and courtyards, joining one street to another, transporting curious walkers from the Renaissance to the modern via a stone staircase and gothic arcade. They crisscross Vieux Lyon and the Croix-Rousse hillside where, in autumn, you might enter a traboule in the rain and come out beside the street market on the main boulevard in bright sunshine.
At the morning market in La Croix-Rousse, where the city’s silk factories used to be, a noisy line of food stalls offer roast chickens, clanking bags of walnuts and piles of oversized pumpkins, a contrast to the artistic displays of conserves and truffles at Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse food hall in the east of the city. It’s almost truffle season but Lyon, the “gastronomic capital of the world”, has year-round delights including Saint-Marcellin cheese, rosette sausage and praline tart.
With their rich flavours and hearty portions, traditional dishes suit the colder months. If I need warming up, I go to Le Garet near the opera house, one of Lyon’s typical bouchon restaurants serving pig’s trotters, tripe and quenelle de brochet (pike dumpling). If I wake up hungry, Le Café du Peintre serves a mâchon (a selection of cooked pork with a jug of beaujolais) from 8.30am. For something more refined, Burgundy by Matthieu has one of the best wine cellars in France. It is on the banks of the Saône, near the new Navigône ferry stop.
On Wednesdays, weekends and public holidays, the riverbus continues to the spectacular Musée des Confluences, where the Saône meets the Rhône. Its programme this autumn includes exhibitions on the people of the Amazon, amazing animals and zombies.
This year marks the 130th anniversary of Auguste and Louis Lumière’s first film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, which they created while living at the family’s art nouveau villa in Lyon’s Monplaisir district. It’s now part of the Institut Lumière, which houses cinemas as well as the museum, and is the hub of the annual Festival Lumière. Films and cinematic events take place from 11-19 Oct, with almost 450 showings across the city, including two remastered 1920s silent movies by Victor Sjöström – Le Vent (The Wind) and La Charrette Fantôme (The Phantom Carriage) – accompanied by the National Orchestra of Lyon.
Just before the start of winter, Lyon’s Fête des Lumières (lights not the brothers) runs from 5-8 Dec. The city’s heritage buildings are illuminated, and light installations are set up in the squares and on the riverbank. I watch from Place Bellecour and then wander down to the water where locals place lanterns in their windows to celebrate solidarity and brace themselves for the cold.
I stay at the Fourvière Hôtel (doubles from €139 room-only), a former convent near the city’s Roman ruins, which has a heated indoor pool, restaurant and great views over the city.
Jon Bryant
Accommodation prices correct at time of going to press. These are the lowest available rates for October