Autumn arrives differently in the South of France. There isn’t really that dramatic moment where summer disappears and everything suddenly turns cold and brown. September still feels like summer most days, the sea is warm, people are sitting outside, and the palm trees obviously aren’t going anywhere. But slowly, the colours start changing.
I notice it first in the evenings. The light becomes warmer, the shadows get longer and Nice starts turning golden around five or six o’clock. Then there are the first red leaves in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the markets fill with deeper colours, and suddenly I’m noticing burgundy, olive green, burnt orange and mustard everywhere. These are some of the colours that have been following me around lately.
Baby Blue & Brown
You can never really escape blue when you live on the French Riviera, even in autumn. The sky is still blue, the sea is blue, and that colour always stays part of the season here. Then there is the other side of Nice, with all the warmer browns, wood, stone and autumn leaves. It almost feels like the city is split in two: blue on one side, brown and gold on the other. The huge golden tree in Parc Alsace-Lorraine is one of my favourites. I pass it often, and every autumn it turns this incredible yellow-gold.
Olive Green & Mustard
One of my favourite autumn colours is that very deep wine red that seems to work particularly well here. A glass of wine at Rouge, red café chairs, a burgundy bag, flowers at the market, the leaves covering the stone houses in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. It all starts appearing at roughly the same time. Saint-Paul-de-Vence is probably one of my favourite places nearby once autumn begins. In summer it can feel very busy, but later in the year the whole village changes. The ivy becomes this incredible saturated red against the pale stone and there are little pockets of colour around almost every corner. There is also a proper Fête de l’Automne in Saint-Paul this year, running from 17 October to 2 November 2026, with a village sale, the grape and chestnut festival, pumpkin soup, lantern tours and Halloween events. I already know I want to go back when the leaves are fully red.
Mustard & Tarracota
Autumn sunsets might actually be better than summer ones here. One of my favourite places to watch them is Colline du Château. You get the silhouettes of the pine trees, people sitting along the viewpoint and that hazy orange light over the hills behind Nice. It is one of those places I’ve walked through hundreds of times, but it never looks exactly the same. The other golden place I notice every year is the park near Avenue des Arènes de Cimiez / the Assas area that I walk through regularly. There is one enormous tree there that turns almost completely yellow. Because I pass it so often, I end up watching the colour change little by little rather than noticing it all at once. That is probably one of my favourite things about living somewhere long enough. You start having your own markers for the seasons. You should also try a pottery painting activity, which is perfect for fall.
Blush Pink & Pastel Green
The South of France is already full of warm colours before autumn even begins. Mustard façades, terracotta roofs, ochre walls, old wooden doors, faded stone. In autumn they suddenly make more sense. One of my favourite photographs here is from a museum in Nice, with the yellow room and the illuminated flower. Even without knowing exactly what exhibition I was walking into, I loved the colours immediately. That is also something I want to do more of this autumn: museums. Nice has a surprisingly good museum scene, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret currently has an exhibition devoted to artists and society figures of the Belle Époque running through April 2027. And from 2 to 9 October, Nice is hosting Un Festival C’est Trop Court!, the European short-film festival, as part of the city’s autumn programme around photography and moving image. Ville de Nice Basically, once spending the entire day at the beach becomes slightly less tempting, I remember how many other things there are to do here.
Olive Green & Brown
Clearly, half of these photos seem to be from Saint-Paul-de-Vence. I always end up going back. I love the galleries, the old signs, the stone houses, the little shops and the fact that you can find things that are actually worth keeping rather than just souvenirs. One of my favourite purchases there is a tiny wooden chess set I found in a local shop for around €50. It fits in my bag, which is probably the main reason I bought it, and we genuinely use it all the time. This is exactly the sort of thing I like bringing home from places: something small enough to live with, but still connected to where I found it. There is also a classic-car gathering in Saint-Paul on 17 October as part of the autumn festivities.
Blue & Terracotta
Not everything has to become orange just because it’s October. Some of my favourite autumn combinations are actually blue with warmer colours: dusty blue and rust, navy and burgundy, pale blue with chocolate brown. The blue chairs at Amour Beach, the boats in Nice Port and even the blue and red paintings in the museums somehow fit perfectly into autumn here. The sea also gets this much deeper colour once the light changes. And of course, being on the Côte d’Azur means you can be looking at orange leaves while there are still boats in completely turquoise water. That contradiction is kind of the whole point.
Olive Green & Golden Yellow
October is usually the point when I suddenly become interested in doing things again after spending most of the summer trying to be near water. There are already a few things on my list. Saint-Paul-de-Vence’s autumn celebrations continue through Halloween, including lantern tours on 30 and 31 October, a life-size mystery game through the village and the traditional Halloween sweet hunt. The Musée Picasso in Antibes is also opening Claude Picasso, Une vie en marges on 11 October, showing his photography for the first time in this format, including portraits, surreal compositions and fashion-magazine work. Halloween events appearing across Nice and the surrounding towns.
If I had to reduce it to a few colours, I think autumn here would be: wine red, olive green, ochre, terracotta, dusty blue, butter yellow, faded pink and warm cream. Not exactly the classic orange-and-brown autumn palette. But much more Côte d’Azur. And perhaps that is why I like this time of year so much. Summer here is beautiful, obviously, but it can sometimes feel almost too perfect: bright blue sea, bright blue sky, full sun. Autumn gives everything a little more texture. The beaches empty out. The shadows become longer. The villages turn red.
And Nice becomes gold for an hour every afternoon.
