Portal:France


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Welcome to the France Portal!
Bienvenue sur le Portail France !

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Map of France in the world and position of its largest single land territory in continental Europe

France, officially the French Republic, 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 one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones 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 eighteen 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 2025. France is a semi-presidential republic. Its capital, largest city and main cultural and economic centre is Paris.

Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture. 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. In the 16th century, French culture flourished during the French Renaissance and a French colonial empire emerged. Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.

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. The collapse of the empire 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. His empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. This led to the establishment of the Third French Republic, and subsequent decades saw 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. 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. The current Fifth Republic was formed in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Algeria and most French colonies became independent in the 1960s, with the majority retaining close economic and military ties with France.

France retains its centuries-long status as a global centre of art, science, and philosophy. It hosts the fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the world's leading tourist destination, having received 100 million foreign visitors in 2023. A developed country, France has a high nominal per capita income globally, and its economy ranks among the largest in the world by both nominal GDP and PPP-adjusted GDP. It is a great power, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and an official nuclear-weapon state. The country is part of multiple international organisations and forums. (Full article...)

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The Bal des Ardents depicted in a 15th-century miniature from Froissart's Chronicles. The Duchess of Berry holds her blue skirts over a barely visible Charles VI of France as the dancers tear at their burning costumes. One dancer has leapt into the wine vat; in the gallery above, musicians continue to play.

The Bal des Ardents (Ball of the Burning Men), or the Bal des Sauvages (Ball of the Wild Men), was a masquerade ball held on 28 January 1393 in Paris, France, at which King Charles VI had a dance performance with five members of the French nobility. Four of the dancers were killed in a fire caused by a torch brought in by Louis I, Duke of Orléans, the king's brother.

The ball, held at the royal palace of Saint-Pol, was one of a series of events organised to entertain Charles, who had suffered an attack of insanity in the previous summer of that year. The circumstances of the fire undermined confidence in the king's capacity to rule; Parisians considered it proof of courtly decadence and threatened to rebel against the more powerful members of the nobility. The public's outrage forced Charles and his brother Orléans, whom a contemporary chronicler accused of attempted regicide and sorcery, to offer penance for the event. (Full article...)

Prost in 2012
Alain Marie Pascal Prost, OBE, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur is a French racing driver. A four-time Formula One Drivers' Champion, Prost has won more titles than any driver except for Juan Manuel Fangio (five championships), and Michael Schumacher (seven championships). From 1987 until 2001 Prost held the record for most Grand Prix victories. Schumacher surpassed Prost's total of 51 victories at the 2001 Belgian Grand Prix. In 1999, Prost received the World Sports Awards of the Century in the motor sport category.

Prost discovered karting at the age of 14 during a family holiday. He progressed through motor sport's junior ranks before joining the McLaren Formula One team in 1980 at the age of 25. He finished in the points on his Formula One début in Argentina and took his first race victory at his home Grand Prix in France a year later, while he was driving for the factory Renault team.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Prost formed a fierce rivalry with mainly Ayrton Senna, but also Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell. In 1986, at the last race of the season, he managed to pip Mansell and Piquet of Williams to the title. Senna joined Prost at McLaren in 1988 and the two had a series of controversial clashes, including a collision at the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix that gave Prost his third Drivers' Championship. Before the end of a winless 1991 season Prost was fired by Ferrari for his public criticism of the team. After a sabbatical in 1992, Prost joined the Williams team. With a competitive car, Prost won the 1993 championship and retired from driving at the end of the year.

Selected fare or cuisine –

A dish of bœuf bourguignon

Beef bourguignon (US: /ˌbʊərɡnˈjɒ̃/) or bœuf bourguignon (UK: /ˌbɜːf ˈbɔːrɡɪn.jɒ̃/; French: [bœf buʁɡiɲɔ̃]), also called beef Burgundy, and bœuf à la Bourguignonne, is a French stew of beef braised in red wine, often red Burgundy, and beef stock, typically flavored with carrots, onions, garlic, and a bouquet garni, and garnished with pearl onions and mushrooms.

"Bourguignon" is, since the mid-nineteenth century, a culinary term applied to various dishes prepared with wine or with a mushroom and onion garnish. It is probably not a regional recipe from Burgundy. (Full article...)

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Monbar Hotel in 2007

The Monbar Hotel attack was carried out by the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL), a Spanish state-sponsored death squad, on 25 September 1985 in Bayonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France. The targets were four members of the Basque separatist terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), whom the Spanish government believed to be senior figures in the organization, itself proscribed as a terrorist group in Spain and France. All four people were killed, with a fifth person, apparently unconnected to ETA, injured in the shooting. This represented the deadliest attack carried out by the GAL. Although two of the participants were apprehended shortly after the shooting, controversy surrounded the possible involvement of senior figures in the Spanish police.

This attack, and similar attacks carried out by the GAL, became a major issue during the 1996 Spanish general election after a supreme court trial established that the Spanish Interior Ministry had provided clandestine funding for the GAL. Spanish Interior Minister José Barrionuevo and his security chief, Rafael Vera, were jailed for ten years for sanctioning a kidnapping and misappropriation of public funds to finance the group, and the GAL scandal is seen as a key factor in the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) losing the election, though more senior figures in the PSOE, such as Felipe Gonzalez, denied knowledge and involvement. (Full article...)

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In the news

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14 August 2025 –
Mali announces the arrest of two generals, other military officers, civilians, and a French national accused of plotting to destabilize the state, with authorities stating the alleged conspiracy began on August 1 and that investigations are ongoing. (AP)
6 August 2025 – 2025 European and Mediterranean wildfires
One person is killed, thirteen people are injured and one person is missing after a wildfire breaks out in Aude department, France, also burning at least 16,000 hectares of land. (BBC News) (DW)
1 August 2025 – France–Palestine relations
France temporarily suspends its programme for receiving Palestinian refugees fleeing the Gaza Strip following the deportation of a Palestinian student accused of making antisemitic social media posts. (Le Monde)
24 July 2025 – International recognition of Palestine
French president Emmanuel Macron announces that France will recognize Palestine as a state starting September, citing reasons such as an immediate end to the war and helping the humanitarian crisis. (France 24) (AP)

Did you know –

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

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