Amiens Cathedral

Choose Amiens for sheer scale. It is the biggest cathedral in France, 145 meters long and 70 meters wide at the transept, and the nave feels taller than it has any right to be. Two things repay a longer stay. The 16th-century carved wooden choir stalls are magnificent and easy to miss if you hurry. And on summer evenings, and again in December during the Christmas market, a free 50-minute light show projects color back onto the sculpted west front, a reminder that these portals were once painted.