The red steps
Twenty-four steps every film star has climbed โ your turn is free.
Timantha102938 โ Public domain ยท leineart โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท MOSSOT โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Alexander Migl โ CC BY-SA 4.0
Outside events, generally only on guided tours the tourist office runs on set days โ covering the grand auditorium and festival backstage, worthwhile for film lovers. Otherwise the steps and exterior are the experience.
Early morning before ten is near-empty; evening after dark is handsome under lights with a shorter queue. Summer midday brings a real line โ and the carpet may vanish on event days.
For star-atmosphere lovers yes, with right expectations: nothing admits you without invitations and hotels hit fantasy prices, but watching arrivals from the barriers and street star-spotting genuinely delights the inclined. Everyone else should avoid late May entirely.
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The Palais des Festivals is what makes Cannes 'Cannes': here the world's most famous film festival happens each May, its stars climbing the twenty-four red-carpeted steps before every lens on earth. The rest of the year the steps belong to visitors: a red carpet is laid almost always, and a smiling queue takes turns at the famous ascent photo โ a complete free tourist ritual. Around the palace runs the Walk of Fame, three-hundred-plus handprints of stars who passed here, Chaplin onward. The palace itself is a big year-round congress centre, and its position is the Croisette's point zero: the famous seafront starts east of it, the old port and the Suquet old quarter immediately west.
Twenty-four steps every film star has climbed โ your turn is free.
Three hundred handprints in the pavement, Chaplin to today.
Croisette east, Suquet and port west โ all Cannes from here.
1 Boulevard de la Croisette, 06400 Cannes