There are 77 vernacular minority languages, eight spoken in Metropolitan France and 69 in the overseas territories. The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew the Ancien Régime and produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which expresses the nation’s ideals to this day. France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating part of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. Its collapse initiated a period of relative decline in which France endured the Bourbon Restoration until the founding of the French Second Republic which was succeeded by the Second French Empire upon Napoleon III’s takeover. This led to the establishment of the French Third Republic, with a period of economic prosperity and cultural and scientific flourishing known as the Belle Époque. France was one of the major participants of World War I, from which it emerged victorious at great human and economic cost.

Real GDP (purchasing power parity)

It was among the Allies of World War II, but it surrendered and was occupied in 1940. Following its liberation in 1944, the short-lived Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the defeat in the Algerian War. Algeria and most French colonies became independent in the 1960s, with the majority retaining close economic and military ties with France. France hosts “the world’s biggest annual sporting event”, the annual cycling race Tour de France.373 Other popular sports played in France include football, judo, tennis,374 rugby union375 and pétanque. France has hosted events such as the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups,376 the 2007 Rugby World Cup,377 and the 2023 Rugby World Cup.378 The country also hosted the 1960 European Nations’ Cup, UEFA Euro 1984, UEFA Euro 2016 and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

• Movement galvanised enough support from the centre-right and left to knock the traditional Socialist and Republican party candidates out in the first round of voting.
• Its collapse initiated a period of relative decline in which France endured the Bourbon Restoration until the founding of the French Second Republic which was succeeded by the Second French Empire upon Napoleon III’s takeover.
• The Carolingian dynasty ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet was crowned king of the Franks.37 His descendants unified the country through wars and inheritance.
• It was among the Allies of World War II, but it surrendered and was occupied in 1940.
• Clovis was the first Germanic conqueror after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire to convert to Catholic Christianity; thus France was given the title “Eldest daughter of the Church” by the papacy,33 and French kings were called “the Most Christian Kings of France”.
• Small and picturesque villages are promoted through the association Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (literally “The Most Beautiful Villages of France”).

Donald Trump ogłosił nowe cła. Obejmą głównie lekarstwa

In the 20th century, French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier designed several buildings in France. More recently, French architects have combined both modern and old architectural styles. The Louvre Pyramid is an example of modern architecture added to an older building. The most difficult buildings to integrate within French cities are skyscrapers, as they are visible from afar. For instance, in Paris since 1977, new buildings had to be under 37 metres (121 ft).309 A significant number of skyscrapers are located in the La Défense financial district.310 Other massive buildings that are a challenge to integrate into their environment are large bridges; an example of the way this has been done is the Millau Viaduct. Some famous modern French architects include Jean Nouvel, Dominique Perrault, Christian de Portzamparc and Paul Andreu.

Regions

The climate in mainland France is temperate, with quite significant regional differences. Regional variations occur due to latitude and differences in distance to the sea or mountainous areas. Temperature variations are less pronounced on the French coast than in the rest of the country, but rainfall is higher. Seventeen people are killed in Islamist terrorist attacks, including at offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a Jewish supermarket in Paris.

Metropolitan France covers 551,500 square kilometres (212,935 sq mi),83 the largest among European Union members.73 France’s total land area, with its overseas departments and territories (excluding Adélie Land), is 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi),84 0.45% of the total land area on Earth. France possesses a wide variety of landscapes, from coastal plains in the north and west to the mountain ranges of the Alps in the southeast, the Massif Central in the south-central and Pyrenees in the southwest. With numerous overseas departments and territories scattered across the planet, France possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,261,000 sq mi). The government does not regulate the choice of language in publications by individuals, but the use of French is required by law in commercial and workplace communications. The French government tries to promote French in the EU and globally through institutions such as the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.

President Macron appointed Gabriel Attal as France’s prime minister in January 2024, in a move aimed at reviving his presidency with a new government. The years which followed saw protracted conflicts culminating in independence for chicken road Algeria and most other French colonies in Africa, as well as decolonisation in south-east Asia. At once universal and particular, French culture has spread far and greatly influenced the development of art and science, particularly anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. I am no more modern than I am ancient, no more French than Chinese; and the idea of la patrie, the fatherland—that is, the obligation to live on a bit of earth coloured red or blue on a map, and to detest the other bits coloured green or black—has always seemed to me narrow, restricted, and ferociously stupid. The oldest traces of archaic humans in what is now France date from approximately 1.8 million years ago.17 Neanderthals occupied the region into the Upper Paleolithic era but were slowly replaced by Homo sapiens around 35,000 BC.18 This period witnessed the emergence of cave painting in the Dordogne and Pyrenees, including at Lascaux, dated to c.

Grand Soir 3 is the late-night news programme of French public television network France 3. In the April 2022 presidential election, Macron again defeated Le Pen in the second round of voting. The following year saw President Macron’s popularity fall as he tried to overhaul the economy, with major street protests in November 2018 over his attempt to wean the public off fossil fuels through price hikes. The former banker launched an independent campaign for the presidency little over a year before the election, and his En Marche! Movement galvanised enough support from the centre-right and left to knock the traditional Socialist and Republican party candidates out in the first round of voting.

• During the Hercynian uplift in the Paleozoic Era, the Armorican Massif, the Massif Central, the Morvan, the Vosges and Ardennes ranges and the island of Corsica were formed.
• France,h officially the French Republic,i is a country primarily located in Western Europe.
• Emmanuel Macron breaks the Gaullist/Republican-Socialist hold on the presidency through his La République En Marche!
• De Gaulle returns to power on back of the crisis and founds the Fifth Republic, with a stronger presidency.

French foreign policy after World War II has been largely shaped by membership in the European Union, of which it was a founding member. Since the 1963 Élysée Treaty, France has developed close ties with reunified Germany to become the most influential driving force of the EU.142 Since 1904 France has maintained an “Entente Cordiale” with the United Kingdom, and there has been a strengthening of ties between the countries, especially militarily. During the Hercynian uplift in the Paleozoic Era, the Armorican Massif, the Massif Central, the Morvan, the Vosges and Ardennes ranges and the island of Corsica were formed. These massifs delineate several sedimentary basins such as the Aquitaine Basin in the southwest and the Paris Basin in the north. Various routes of natural passage, such as the Rhône Valley, allow easy communication.

Land boundaries

France,h officially the French Republic,i is a country primarily located in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zone in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north; Germany to the northeast; Switzerland to the east; Italy and Monaco to the southeast; Andorra and Spain to the south; and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its 18 integral regions—five of which are overseas—span a combined area of 632,702 km2 (244,288 sq mi) and have an estimated total population of over 68.6 million as of January 2025update.

In the Early Middle Ages, the Franks formed the kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia evolving into the Kingdom of France. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralised feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years’ War.

Architecture

A majestic city known as the ville lumière, or “city of light,” Paris has often been remade, most famously in the mid-19th century under the command of Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussman, who was committed to Napoleon III’s vision of a modern city free of the choleric swamps and congested alleys of old, with broad avenues and a regular plan. Paris is now a sprawling metropolis, one of Europe’s largest conurbations, but its historic heart can still be traversed in an evening’s walk. Confident that their city stood at the very centre of the world, Parisians were once given to referring to their country as having two parts, Paris and le désert, the wasteland beyond it. Metropolitan Paris has now extended far beyond its ancient suburbs into the countryside, however, and nearly every French town and village now numbers a retiree or two driven from the city by the high cost of living, so that, in a sense, Paris has come to embrace the desert and the desert Paris. From 1942 to 1944, about 160,000 French citizens, including around 75,000 Jews,65 were deported to death and concentration camps.66 On 6 June 1944, the Allies invaded Normandy, and in August they invaded Provence. The Allies and French Resistance emerged victorious, and French sovereignty was restored with the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF).

French music then followed the rapid emergence of pop and rock music in the middle of the 20th century. Although English-speaking creations achieved popularity in the country, French pop music, known as chanson française, has also remained very popular. Among the most important French artists of the century are Édith Piaf, Georges Brassens, Léo Ferré, Charles Aznavour and Serge Gainsbourg.334 Modern pop music has seen the rise of popular French hip hop, French rock, techno/funk, and turntablists/DJs. Although there are very few rock bands in France compared to English-speaking countries,335 bands such as Noir Désir, Mano Negra, Niagara, Les Rita Mitsouko and more recently Superbus, Phoenix and Gojira,336 or Shaka Ponk, have reached worldwide popularity.

The Stade de France in Saint-Denis is France’s largest stadium and was the venue for the 1998 FIFA World Cup and 2007 Rugby World Cup finals. Since 1923, France is famous for its 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car endurance race.379 Several major tennis tournaments take place in France, including the Paris Masters and the French Open, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments. With an estimated population of 68,605,616 people,6j France is the 20th most populous country in the world, the third-most populous in Europe, and the second most populous in the European Union. France is divided into 18 regions (located in Europe and overseas), five overseas collectivities, one overseas territory, one special collectivity (New Caledonia) and one uninhabited island (Clipperton) under the authority of the Minister of Overseas France.

507 – Frankish leader Clovis defeats a Visigothic army at the battle of Vouillé and conquers Gallia Aquitania (southwest France) forming the basis of modern-day France. During the Middle Ages, many fortified castles were built by feudal nobles to mark their powers. Some French castles that survive are Chinon, Château d’Angers, Château de Vincennes and the Cathar castles. During this era, France had been using Romanesque architecture like most of Western Europe. At the beginning of the 20th century, Cubism was developed by Georges Braque and the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was living in Paris.

Small and picturesque villages are promoted through the association Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (literally “The Most Beautiful Villages of France”). The “Remarkable Gardens” label is a list of the over 200 gardens classified by the Ministry of Culture. France attracts many religious pilgrims on their way to St. James or to Lourdes, a town in the Hautes-Pyrénées that hosts several million visitors a year. After demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, metallurgy appeared, initially working gold, copper and bronze, then later iron.19 France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic, including the Carnac stones site (approximately 3,300 BC). A series of coordinated Islamist terrorist attacks kill 130 people and injure 416 people in Paris – the deadliest in France since World War Two. Suicide bombers strike at outside the Stade de France in Saint-Denis during a football match.

Algeria grains independence from French colonial rule.OAS (Organisation armée secrète) far-right paramilitaries attempt to kill De Gaulle for what they see as his abandonment of French settlers in Algeria by machine-gunning his presidential car. De Gaulle returns to power on back of the crisis and founds the Fifth Republic, with a stronger presidency. Napoleon is defeated at Battle of Waterloo by an allied coalition – ending 23 years of war across Europe – and the Bourbon monarchy is re-established.

Louis XVI supported America with money, fleets and armies, helping them win independence from Great Britain. France gained revenge but verged on bankruptcy—a factor that contributed to the Revolution. Some of the Enlightenment occurred in French intellectual circles, and scientific breakthroughs, such as the naming of oxygen and the first hot air balloon carrying passengers, were achieved by French scientists. French explorers took part in the voyages of scientific exploration through maritime expeditions. Enlightenment philosophy, in which reason is advocated as the primary source of legitimacy, undermined the power of and support for the monarchy and was a factor in the Revolution. From the 11th century, the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the County of Anjou, established its dominion over the surrounding provinces of Maine and Touraine, then built an “empire” from England to the Pyrenees, covering half of modern France.

In late antiquity, Gaul was divided into Germanic kingdoms and a remaining Gallo-Roman territory. Celtic Britons, fleeing the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, settled in west Armorica; the Armorican peninsula was renamed Brittany, and Celtic culture was revived. The appointment of Attal, the former education minister, does not necessarily signal any major political shift, but signals a desire by President Macron to try and move beyond 2023’s unpopular pension and immigration reforms and improve his party’s chances in the EU parliamentary elections in June 2024. The capital and by far the most important city of France is Paris, one of the world’s preeminent cultural and commercial centres.

Civil aircraft registration country code prefix

Victor Hugo is sometimes seen as “the greatest French writer of all time”314 for excelling in all literary genres. Hugo’s verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Dante and Homer.315 His novel Les Misérables is widely seen as one of the greatest novels ever written,316 and The Hunchback of Notre Dame has remained immensely popular. Other major authors of the 19th century include Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo), Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas), Émile Zola (Les Rougon-Macquart), Honoré de Balzac (La Comédie humaine), Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier and Stendhal (The Red and the Black, The Charterhouse of Parma). The final victory in the Hundred Years’ War marked an important stage in the evolution of French architecture. It was the time of the French Renaissance and several artists from Italy were invited to the French court; many residential palaces were built in the Loire Valley, from 1450 as a first reference the Château de Montsoreau.303 Examples of such residential castles include the Château de Chambord, the Château de Chenonceau, or the Château d’Amboise. French artists developed the rococo style in the 18th century, as a more intimate imitation of the Baroque style, the works of the court-endorsed artists Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard being the most representative in the country.