Christmas Market Holidays

Weekend Breaks to the Christmas Markets

Christmas market weekend breaks work best when the flight is short and the airport transfer is simple, and these five deliver both.

• Amsterdam: The ice rink at Museumplein and the Light Festival, which floats illuminated artworks along the canals from late November, give the city its December character. The main market stalls cluster around Dam Square and the Westergas quarter, and a canal-side hotel is a twenty-minute train ride from the airport. A two-night trip does the job here.
• Paris: The big market in the Tuileries Garden is the one to plan around: a Ferris wheel, an ice rink and more than a hundred chalets between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde. The department-store window displays on Boulevard Haussmann are free and best seen after dark. A shorter flight than most people expect makes it a strong two-night choice.
• Berlin: The WeihnachtsZauber at Gendarmenmarkt, with its ticketed entry and craft-only stalls, is the polished one, and the market outside Charlottenburg Palace is the atmospheric one. The city runs more than sixty markets in total, from a medieval fair to a rooftop version. Cheaper than the southern cities for hotels and dinner alike.
• Lyon: The Fête des Lumières fills four evenings in early December with light installations on every major building, and the market on Place Carnot runs alongside it through the month. The city is widely held to be the country's food capital, so the bouchon dinners matter as much as the stalls. Book early for the Fête weekend; hotels fill months out.
• Poland: Wrocław's market on the Rynek is the one Polish locals rate highest, with a dwarf-themed trail for children and a fairy-tale forest built among the stalls, while Gdańsk's runs beneath restored Hanseatic facades beside the old harbour. Both are served by low-cost flights from Irish airports. Prices are among the lowest on this page.