France

France is a country in Europe.

It has the sea on two sides. It has big mountains, green fields and long rivers. The capital city is Paris. A tall iron tower stands there.

France is in northwestern Europe. The Atlantic Ocean washes its west coast and the Mediterranean Sea its south coast, and the English Channel separates it from England. On a map, mainland France has a shape with roughly six sides, and the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean is part of it too.

Most of France is low plains, plateaus and old, worn-down mountains, with the high Alps and Pyrenees along its borders. About 69.1 million people lived in France at the start of 2026. Its capital is Paris, built on the Seine River.

Mainland France lies near the western end of the Eurasian landmass, largely between latitudes 42° and 51° N. Britannica describes its outline as roughly hexagonal: Belgium and Luxembourg to the northeast; Germany, Switzerland and Italy to the east; Spain, Andorra and the Mediterranean to the south; the Bay of Biscay to the west; and the English Channel to the northwest. Monaco is an independent enclave on the south coast, and Corsica is an integral part of the country.

Metropolitan France covers 543,941 square kilometers; with its overseas lands, such as French Guiana on the northeastern coast of South America, the total is about 643,800 square kilometers. Low plains, plateaus and old massifs dominate the landscape; the younger, higher Alps and Pyrenees are the exception. INSEE estimated the population at about 69.1 million on 1 January 2026, and Paris is the capital.

Paris is the capital of France.

The Eiffel Tower stands in Paris. It is made of iron. Mont-Saint-Michel is a small rocky island with old buildings on top. The sea comes in all around it.

Paris, the capital, is home to about 2.1 million people (2023). It grew along a bend in the Seine River, and many famous buildings stand on its banks, from the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower. The tower was finished in 1889 after just 2 years, 2 months and 5 days of building, and today it is 330 meters tall.

On the coast between Normandy and Brittany, Mont-Saint-Michel is a rocky islet surrounded by sandbanks and strong tides, with an abbey and a village on top. Near Paris, the Palace of Versailles was the home of French kings from Louis XIV to Louis XVI.

UNESCO lists the banks of the Seine in central Paris (inscribed 1991) as an example of riverside architecture in which layers of the city's history sit side by side: Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle from the Middle Ages, the Pont Neuf from the Renaissance, and the Louvre and the Invalides from French classicism. The Eiffel Tower, built by Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, took 2 years, 2 months and 5 days; it was meant to last only 20 years and now stands 330 m with its antennas.

Mont-Saint-Michel, inscribed in 1979, is a Gothic-style Benedictine abbey built between the 11th and 16th centuries on a rocky islet among tidal sandbanks. Versailles, also inscribed in 1979, was the principal residence of the French kings from Louis XIV to Louis XVI and served for more than a century as Europe's model of a royal residence. Marseille, a Mediterranean port of about 886,000 people (2023), began as the Greek colony of Massilia about 600 BCE.

France has very tall mountains.

Mont Blanc is the tallest. Its name means white mountain. Snow and ice cover its top. Long rivers flow across France to the sea.

France's highest mountain is Mont Blanc in the Alps, about 4,806 meters tall. Its name means "white mountain," and glaciers cover about 100 square kilometers of it. The Pyrenees form a wall of mountains along the border with Spain.

The Loire is France's longest river, flowing 1,020 kilometers to the Atlantic. The Seine runs 780 kilometers through Paris to the English Channel. The weather changes from place to place: the northwest is mild and damp, the northeast has colder winters, and the Mediterranean south has mild winters and dry summers.

Britannica divides France into three geologic regions: the worn remains of ancient Hercynian mountains (such as the Massif Central and the Vosges), the northern and western plains, and the young fold mountains of the south and southeast, the Alps and Pyrenees. Mont Blanc, whose massif lies along the French-Italian border, reaches about 4,806 m; glaciers cover about 100 km² of it, and the Mer de Glace is the second-longest glacier in the Alps.

The Loire, the longest French river at 1,020 km, drains about 117,000 km² and is very irregular, carrying eight times more water in December and January than in late summer. Three climates meet: an oceanic climate in the northwest (Brest averages 6 °C in January and 16 °C in July), a continental one in the northeast, where Strasbourg has the widest temperature range, and a Mediterranean one in the southeast, with dry summers and the strong north wind called the mistral. Forest covers more than a quarter of the country.

Ibexes climb high in the mountains.

They have big curved horns. Pink flamingos wade in shallow water in the south. Deer and wild boar live in France too.

High in the Alps lives the Alpine ibex, a wild goat. Males weigh about 100 kilograms and have huge curved horns with ridges across the front. Their numbers fell sharply, and ibexes have been brought back to France.

In the warm south, flamingos have places to live. These tall pink birds filter tiny food from shallow water with their bills. Red deer, roe deer, wild boar, foxes and hares live in France too, and the brown bear and the lynx of the Pyrenees are endangered.

Britannica calls France's fauna fairly typical of western Europe: red deer, roe deer and wild boar among the larger mammals, hares and rodents in woods and fields, and carnivores such as the fox, the genet and the rare wildcat. The Alpine ibex (Capra ibex ibex), once common across the western and central Alps, became greatly reduced and has been reintroduced to France; adult males weigh about 100 kg, stand about 90 cm at the shoulder and carry large, semicircular, ridged horns.

Southern France lies at the northern edge of the range of several African migrants, so flamingos, Egyptian vultures, bee-eaters and rollers have habitats there. Flamingos, 90 to 150 cm tall, filter food from shallow water with comblike structures in their bills; carotenoid pigments in that food give them their pink color. Britannica lists the badger, otter, beaver, the Alpine marmot, and the brown bear and lynx of the Pyrenees among France's endangered species.

About 69 million people live in France.

Most people speak French. Some also speak other languages, like Breton or Basque. Families and friends share a big, special meal on important days.

About 69.1 million people lived in France at the start of 2026. French is the national language, spoken and taught everywhere, but many people also keep regional languages alive, such as Breton in the west, Basque and Catalan in the south, and Alsatian in the east. Families who moved to France from other countries brought languages such as Arabic.

For birthdays, weddings and other big days, many people in France share a long festive meal. It starts with drinks, then has at least four courses: a starter, fish or meat with vegetables, cheese, and dessert.

France had about 69.1 million people on 1 January 2026 (INSEE). French is the official and national language, but Britannica lists several regional languages: Germanic Alsatian and Flemish in the east and north; Occitan, Corsican and Catalan, which show Latin influence, in the south; Breton, a Celtic language related to Welsh; and Basque, a language isolate. After universal primary schooling began in 1872, regional languages were repressed in schools; more recently several have been taught again in schools and universities. Immigration has added non-European languages, notably Arabic.

In 2010 UNESCO added the gastronomic meal of the French to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list. UNESCO describes it as a social practice for celebrating important moments, with a fixed structure: an apéritif, at least four courses (a starter, fish or meat with vegetables, cheese and dessert) and liqueurs, with local products, food paired with wine and a carefully set table. France has no official religion.