France

France: capital Paris, population 68.7M, area 551,695 km². The 23rd most populous country, in Europe. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Metropolitan France links the Atlantic, English Channel and Mediterranean across a landscape that reaches the Alps and Pyrenees. Ideas tested here include decimal measurement, public film projection and the restaurant rating guide. Its monuments preserve everything from Ice Age painting to exposed nineteenth-century ironwork.

• On 14 July 1789, attackers found only seven prisoners inside the Bastille; the fortress's fall nevertheless became the French Revolution's enduring public symbol.
• France launched the metric system in 1799, defining measurement through decimal units and physical standards for the metre and kilogram rather than local measures.
• On 28 December 1895, the Lumière brothers charged admission for ten short films at Paris's Salon Indien, a screening often treated as commercial cinema's beginning.
• The first Tour de France covered 2,428 kilometres in six stages from 1 to 19 July 1903; Maurice Garin won by almost three hours.

• Louis Braille was 15 when he presented his six-dot reading system in 1824; its compact cells let fingertips identify letters without tracing raised print.
• Louis Pasteur gave nine-year-old Joseph Meister 13 inoculations over 11 days in July 1885; the boy survived what was presumed to be rabies exposure.
• Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise, painted in 1872 and exhibited in 1874, supplied the name that a critic mockingly attached to the Impressionist movement.
• Georges Méliès used substitution splices, multiple exposures and hand-colouring in the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon, turning camera tricks into cinematic storytelling.

• The Eiffel Tower reached 300 metres in 1889 and now stands 330 metres with antennas; its iron frame was assembled from 18,038 prefabricated parts.
• On 12 September 1940, eighteen-year-old Marcel Ravidat and three friends descended a 15-metre shaft near Montignac and found the painted chambers of Lascaux.
• Versailles's Hall of Mirrors pairs 17 arched windows with 578 mirrors; in June 1919, delegates signed the treaty ending war with Germany inside it.
• A raised causeway built to Mont-Saint-Michel in 1879 trapped silt around the island; a permeable bridge replaced it in 2014 so tides could circulate again.

• Michelin printed nearly 35,000 free copies of its first guide in 1900, when France had fewer than 3,000 cars, hoping useful maps would encourage tyre wear.
• UNESCO inscribed France's baguette craft in 2022; the traditional loaf uses only flour, water, salt and yeast or starter, with fermentation and hand-shaped scoring.
• Cardinal Richelieu formalised the Académie française in 1635; its 40 elected members, called Immortals, work on a dictionary whose first edition appeared in 1694.
• The first Cannes Film Festival actually held opened in September 1946 after its planned 1939 debut was cancelled; films from 21 countries entered the programme.

What is the capital of France?

The capital of France is Paris.

What is the population of France?

France has about 68.7M people — the 23rd most populous country in the world.

How big is France?

France covers 551,695 km², making it the 48th largest country by area.

Which region is France in?

France is in Western Europe, Europe.