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 France...the land of romance
With over 75 million annual visitors, France is the world’s top ranked travel destination, a distinction the country has now enjoyed for the past thirteen years. While Paris, with its fascinating museums, superb cuisine restaurants, renowned landmarks,  and dazzling nightlife, remains France’s most favored destination, growing numbers of visitors, however, are beginning to discover France’s other magnificent cities, including Marseille, Bordeaux, Cote d’Azur, Lyon, Nice, Lourdes and Strasburg (See “Most Popular Destinations” below for city descriptions, local attractions and photographs).
Geographical and Sociological Profile
France has a population of slightly more than 60 million and is Europe’s most ethnically diverse country. Geographically, France is bordered by Belgium, Germany and Switzerland on its  northern and eastern boarders, the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay on its western borders, and by Italy, Spain and the Mediterranean Sea on its southern borders (Click here for map). The country’s economy, which ranks 5th among the world’s leading GDP producers, is highly diversified, relatively stable, and is largely supported by industrial manufacturing, an evolving service sector, and thousands of small family farms. Despite its arable land limitations, France is one of the world’s major growers of high quality grains and fruits, most notably grapes, from which its delightful wines are produced.
The information below was provided by the Fondation de France, the United Nations, and the World Resources Institute, and was last updated on February 8, 2004. For more current information, consult the CIA’s World Fact Book by clicking here.
Travel Code: Good (Click here for details)
Population: 60,180,000 (As of July, 2003)
Land Area: 545,630 Square Kilometers
Capital: Paris
Currency: French Franc (Note: Click here for currency converter)
Climate: Cool winters and mild summers, but mild winters and hot summers in south.
Terrain: Flat plains or rolling hills in north and west, mountainous in south and east.
Languages: French 100%, although many regional dialects and languages.
Religions: Roman Catholic 85%, Muslim 7%, Protestant 2%, Jewish 1%
Literacy: 99%
Major Cities: Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Nice, Nantes
Mountains: French Alps, Pyrenees, Jura Mountains, Massif Mountain
Lakes: Lake Bourget, Lake Abbaye (Jura Lake Region), Lake of Sautet
Rivers: Seine, Rhine, Saone, Rhone, I’Yonne, Doubs
France: A Brief History
During the 1st Century BC through the late 5th Century, a time when France was under the Roman Empire’s rule, France was called Gaul and inhabited mostly by Celts and Germanics. After the Roman Empire fell, Gaul was then controlled by the Franks and later by weak territorial kings, during which time the country was renamed France. Once France’s weak monarchies began collapsing in the 14th Century, England attempted to claim France, an event that marked the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. After France defeated England in 1453, Louis XI ascended as the country’s strongest ruling monarch, united the country, and then successfully developed France into a flourishing society.
In the late 15th Century and into the 16th Century, France was again fraught by internal troubles and wars, most notably the Italian Wars, which ended during Henry IV’s reign. Henry the IV, however, was assassinated in 1610, but his ambitious plans of building France into a powerful country continued during the reigns of his successors, which eventually resulted in France usurping Spain as the world’s strongest military power by 1700. The 18th Century was an aggressive colonial expansion period for France, as well as for most other European countries, and France and England again became embroiled in territorial conflicts. Despite these conflicts, however, the 18th Century was a very prosperous time in France, but also a time when the income and living standards between the country’s rich and poor continued to widen, a condition that sparked the 1789 French Revolution.
France’s new revolutionary government, however, proved to be extremely unstable and unpopular, resulting in its 1799 overthrow by a rising army commander named Napoleon Bonaparte. After 5 years, Napoleon was declared Emperor and embarked on a military campaign to expand France’s empire throughout Europe. Although Napoleon’s humiliating defeat at Trafalgar in 1805 left England in command of the sea, Napoleon, however, continued to win a series of stunning land battles over the following seven years. After his invasion of Russia failed, however, Napoleon's fortunes turned and he was forced into exile in Elba by Europe’s Allied governments; England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. He then escaped, secretly returned to France, and then resumed his battles against the Allies. While relatively successful during his initial battles, he was defeated by the Allies during the Battle of Waterloo, after which he was once again exiled, this time to St. Helena where he remained in exile until his death in circa 1821.
Upon Napoleon’s final exile, the victorious Allies restored France’s puppet monarchy, but the monarchy collapsed again when the country’s people rebelled and declared the Second Republic. Louis Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, was then elected president of France’s new republic in 1848, but soon after overthrew the government and imposed himself as the country’s emperor, creating what became known as France’s “Second Empire.” Much like his ambitious uncle, Louis’ fame came as he built France into a powerful military force and further expanded the country's colonial empire. His downfall, similarly, was largely determined by a single military loss, the Battle of Sedan, during which he was captured, deposed, and exiled to England where he died in 1873.
Shortly after Louis’ exile and France’s loss to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War, France then created its Third Republic. Faced with Germany as a neighboring enemy, as well as its colonial competitor, France sought to maintain peace with Germany and with its other European neighbors by entering into a series of interlocking treaties and military alliances. By the late 19th Century and into the early 20th Century, however, it was becoming clear that relations between France and Europe's other industrial and military powers were growing more strained. The continent’s network of interlocking alliances, however, collapsed in August, 1914 shortly after Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, which triggered the start of World War I.
During the years between World War I and World War II, France retained its Third Republic government, but the country’s struggling lower class majority elected a number of socialist governments in an effort to improve their marginal living standards. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, France declared war on Germany, after which France quickly fell victim to Hitler’s powerful Nazi army. In 1946, two years after its liberation by the Allies during World War II, France again reorganized and established the Fourth Republic, which governed until De Gaulle assumed power during the country’s Algerian crisis in the late 1950s. In 1958, under De Gaulle’s leadership, France then again amended its constitution and created The Fifth Republic, its present government, which transferred considerably more governmental ruling power to the country’s presidency.
France’s current president, Jacques Chirac, assumed office May 17, 1995 after campaigning to improve the country’s economy and to reduce its historically high unemployment rate. Chirac’s once popular RPR party, however, was weakened when the country’s socialists, communists and Green parties formed an alliance against the RPR, resulting in a voter mandate to install socialist Lionel Jospin as the country’s prime minister. (Note: For more detailed information about France’s history and its current political affairs, please click here.)
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