Free Map Of France Sources of free map of france resources from the Web

The capital and most populous city, Paris, is one of the most famous and beautiful cities in the world, and home to numerous historical buildings and monuments.

Settled mainly by the Gauls and related Celtic peoples (apart from a shrinking area of Basque population in the south-west and Ligurian population on the southern coast), the area of modern France comprised the bulk of the region of Gaul (Latin Gallia) under Roman rule from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD.

France is a democracy organised as a unitary semi-presidential republic. It is a developed nation whose modern economy is the fifth-largest in the world in 2003. Its main values are expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

One of the most important events during the Third Republic was the Dreyfus Affair, a political scandal that highlighted the dangerous levels of Anti-semitism and clerical power in the higher reaches of the French political and military systems, towards the end of the 19th century, which ultimately led to the speedy passing of the 1905 law on laïcité, split the whole nation and is referred to in most of the issues in France since that date.

Due to its numerous overseas departments and territories scattered on all oceans of the planet, France possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 11,035,000 km² (4,260,000 sq. miles), just behind the EEZ of the United States (11,351,000 km² / 4,383,000 sq. miles), but ahead of the EEZ of Australia (8,232,000 km² / 3,178,000 sq. miles). According to a different calculation cited by the Pew Research Center, the EEZ of France would be 10,084,201 km² (3,893,532 sq. miles), behind the United States (12,174,629 km² / 4,700,651 sq. miles), but ahead of Australia (8,980,568 km² / 3,467,416 sq. miles) and Russia (7,566,673 km² / 2,921,508 sq. miles).

France has 26 régions: 21 of these are in the continental part of metropolitan France, one is Corse on the island of Corsica (although strictly speaking Corse is in fact a "territorial collectivity", not a région, but is referred to as a région in common speech), 4 are overseas. The région are further subdivided into 100 départements.

Statute legislation may be proposed by the government (i.e. the council of ministers), or by members of parliament. In the first case, it is a projet de loi, in the latter case, a proposition de loi. All projets de loi must undergo compulsory advisory review by the Conseil d'État before being submitted to parliament. Propositions de loi cannot increase the financial load of the state without providing for funding.

While France continues to revere its rich history and independence, French leaders increasingly tie the future of France to the continued development of the European Union (EU). During President Mitterrand's tenure, he stressed the importance of European integration and advocated the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty on European economic and political union, which France's electorate narrowly approved in September 1992.

Traditionally a predominantly Roman Catholic country, with anticlerical leanings, France is since the 1970s a very secular country. Freedom of religion is a constitutional right, as reflected by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The dominant concept of the relationships between the public sphere and religions is that of laïcité, which implies that the government does not intervene in religious dogma, and that religions should refrain from intervening in policy-making. Tensions occasionally erupt about the alleged or real behaviour of some part of the Muslim minority, or about alleged or real discrimination against that community; see Islam in France.

The extinction of the main Capetian line (1328) brought to the throne the related house of Valois, but as Philippe IV's grandson, Edward III of England claimed the French crown for himself, inaugurating the succession of conflicts known collectively as the Hundred Years' War. The following century was to see devastating warfare, peasant revolts in both England (Wat Tyler's revolt of 1381) and France (the Jacquerie of 1358) and the growth of nationhood in both countries.

In its Constitution, France declares itself to be an indivisible, laïque (roughly, "secular") democratic and social republic. France's constitution enacts a separation of powers as well as the respect for a number of constitutional rights.