Cours Mirabeau under the plane trees at five

The Cours Mirabeau runs for four hundred metres between the old town and the Mazarin quarter, roofed by two rows of enormous plane trees whose branches meet overhead. Four fountains sit along its length, including the mossy Fontaine d'Eau Chaude that steams on cold mornings, and the whole southern side is a run of café terraces under the canopy.

It photographs as a tunnel. The trunks make a repeating frame, the canopy diffuses everything, and the far end of the avenue always gives you a vanishing point — a couple walking away down the middle is the frame this street was built for. Closer in, the fountains and the wrought-iron hotel doors on the Mazarin side give a set of tighter backgrounds within a hundred metres.

Five in the afternoon onward is when the honey-coloured stone earns its reputation: the sun comes down the axis of the avenue from the west and puts long shafts between the trunks, and the fountains backlight beautifully. Morning is flat here. In winter, when the planes are bare, the whole character changes — more light, harder shadows, the branch structure as graphic pattern.

Practical: it is a busy street with traffic on one side and bus stops along it, so the clean frames are down the middle of the wide pavement, not the roadway. Café terraces are commercial space — work around them rather than through them. And the Fontaine d'Eau Chaude steams best on a genuinely cold morning, so that particular shot is a winter-only proposition.