Youths set fire to more than 600 vehicles, according to police estimates.
However there are signs the crisis is waning, with fewer incidents involving face-to-face conflict between rioters and security, and no reports of shots fired.
The government on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in the worst-hit areas, allowing regional authorities to declare curfews, which appeared to have taken the edge off the urban unrest that has gripped the country for almost two weeks.
The first to act under the new powers, the town of Amiens north of Paris, declared an overnight curfew for unaccompanied people under 16 year of age, and banned petrol sales to minors, even before the decree came into force.
Mayors have already declared separate and local curfews in Orleans and Savigny-sur-Orge, both south of Paris, and in Raincy northeast of the capital.
Across the country, 617 vehicles were torched overnight, and authorities said 1,800 people have been arrested since the riots erupted.
In other violence:
The city of Lyon's entire public transport network was shut down after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a train station.
Youths in Toulouse threw firebombs at police and set fire to cars.
A bus exploded after being hit by a Molotov cocktail in Bordeaux.
In Arras, in northern France, a fire ripped through a shopping centre, spreading from a furniture store to a carpet retailer next door.
Situation calmer
Nevertheless, police said the overall situation was calmer than on recent nights, when dozens of police officers were injured, two by gunshot.
Paris, where the rioting began, was relatively calm with some isolated cases of arson and a dozen arrests, police said.
"There has been a marked decrease (in violence), particularly in the provinces, and the downward trend is continuing in Ile-de-France (the greater Paris region)," a national police official said.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who was visiting police in southwestern Toulouse, a flashpoint of unrest in recent days, said there had been a "fairly significant fall" in the violence.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Belgium, a dozen cars were set alight, although police downplayed concerns about serious violence spreading over the border.
Emergency law
The emergency powers were approved in a special cabinet meeting earlier on Tuesday.
They represent the toughest response to date to rioting in high-immigration suburbs which has left more than 6,000 cars burned, dozens of policemen injured and one civilian dead.
They allow police to carry out house seraches and to ban public meetings.
It invoked a 1955 law, enacted at the start of troubles that triggered the war of independence in French-controlled Algeria.
Seventy-three percent of French people support the government's curfew decision, according to a poll to appear in Le Parisien/Aujourd'hui.
But some opposition parties and civil libertarians say the measure recall one of the worst moments in the country's modern history and has painful associations for Algerians, the original law's main targets.
Mr Sarkozy vowed on Tuesday that the curfews would be implemented "in a manner proportional to the threat", insisting the French people wanted the government to show "firmness".
The violence, set off by the accidental deaths of two teenagers on October 27 who were electrocuted in a sub-station where they had hidden from police, spread across the Paris area and in recent days to the rest of the country.
Those arrested are mainly from Arab and black backgrounds.
More than 100 people have received firm jail sentences.
The crisis has highlighted the failure of French policies to integrate millions of immigrants and their children from its former colonies.
Acknowledging the hardships faced by the Arab community, the government has announced a series of measures to ease access to the job market and stamp out racial discrimination.