The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia becoming the Kingdom of France in 987.įor much of the High Middle Ages, France was a highly decentralized feudal kingdom in which the authority of the king was barely felt. The Germanic Franks arrived in 476 and formed the Kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The area was annexed by Rome in 51 BC, developing a distinct Gallo-Roman culture that laid the foundation of the French language. France, including its overseas territories, has the most time zones of any country, with a total of twelve.ĭuring the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a collection of Celtic tribes.
Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice. France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. The country's eighteen integral regions (five of which are situated overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 km 2 (248,573 sq mi) and a total population of 67.15 million (as of December 2020 France borders Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland, Monaco and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south, as well as the Netherlands, Suriname and Brazil in the Americas. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. The CIA reports the total as 643,801 km 2 (248,573 sq mi).įrance ( French: ( Audio file "LL-Q150 (fra) " not found)), officially the French Republic ( French: error: : text has italic markup ( help)), is a country primarily located in Western Europe, consisting of metropolitan France and several overseas regions and territories.
Adding these give the total shown here for the entire French Republic.
Source gives area of metropolitan France as 551,500 km 2 (212,900 sq mi) and lists overseas regions separately, whose areas sum to 89,179 km 2 (34,432 sq mi).
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