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Paris Plages offers a range of ambiances and experiences which are cut off from the city centre yet entirely anchored within it. This escape from the routine city environment can be understood as a temporary and original process in which one takes on a tourist role through a reversal of places (from the city to the beach) and practices (from city-dweller to seaside holiday-maker). Our empirical analysis reveals a set of tourism-related codes drawn from the world of seaside holidays that are actualised in this temporary environment. The use of place in this way stimulates a mixing of individual behaviours giving rise to collective seaside behaviour in an urban environment. Paris Plages bears witness to the role of tourism as a referential in socio-spatial urban organisation strategies by suggesting that the city-dweller “play the tourist ” in an urban environment that has been temporarily transformed.