Our columnist, Sebastian Modak, is visiting each destination on our 52 Places to Go in 2019 list. He arrived in France from Germany, where he visited Munich and Dessau in search of culture and history.

It’s 7 p.m. in Lyon and the banks of the Rhône are buzzing. Barges converted into bars are full of university students celebrating their first night of the semester, all of them exuding a nervous “new kid” energy. When the sun eventually sets, the city lights up: the many bridges look like they’re wrapped in glowsticks and the stoic beige and maroon buildings along the water are bottom-lit by a warm incandescent wash. High above the city, visible from virtually anywhere, is the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, its gleaming white facade turned yellow by spotlights. It’s as if the entire city is one big museum, carefully curated and expertly lit to encourage awe.

It’s 7 p.m. a week later and almost 200 miles away, in Marseille. In the main plaza of the Cours Julien neighborhood, groups of friends of all ages and ethnicities are gathered around the rusty picnic tables that fill the space outside microbreweries, dive bars and cafes. A couple sits next to the central fountain, sharing a bottle of pastis poured into paper cups and diluted with water, while listening to hip-hop blaring from a portable speaker. On the opposite side of the plaza and down a few of the painted steps that lead into the Opéra neighborhood, two Senegalese friends are jamming, one on a guitar, the other on a djembe that’s been wrapped in streamers of brightly colored silk. Two of their friends watch, passing a fragrant spliff back and forth between them. Street art covers every inch of wall that’s reachable with a ladder, and most of the walls that are not.