France
Europe's most-visited nation, from the Atlantic to the Alps
France is the largest country in Western Europe and one of the world's most influential, a nation of about 68 million whose language, cuisine, art, and ideas have shaped global culture for centuries. Stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Alps and from the chalk cliffs of Normandy to the Mediterranean, it offers an extraordinary range of landscapes packed into a roughly hexagonal mainland. Home of the Enlightenment and the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, France remains a leading economic, military, and diplomatic power, and the most visited tourist destination on the planet.
The terrain is varied: fertile plains and river basins of the Seine, Loire, and Garonne in the north and west — the volcanic uplands of the Massif Central — and high mountains along the borders, the Pyrenees in the south and the Alps in the east, where Mont Blanc rises to 4,806 meters as Western Europe's highest peak. Coastlines front the Atlantic, the English Channel, and the Mediterranean. A diverse economy spans aerospace (Airbus), luxury goods, automobiles, agriculture and wine, nuclear-heavy energy, and tourism, anchored by the global magnet of Paris.
From Roman Gaul through the medieval kingdom, the absolutism of Versailles, and the 1789 Revolution that toppled the monarchy, France has repeatedly reshaped Europe, never more dramatically than under Napoleon. It built a vast colonial empire whose legacy endures in a French-speaking world spanning Africa and beyond. A founding member of the European Union and the eurozone, a nuclear power, and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, France today is a secular republic that prizes its cultural exception, from haute cuisine and cinema to philosophy and fashion.