The Louvre, or the Louvre Museum, is the world's most-visited museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. It is the home of many of the most known work of arts, including the Mona Lisa. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement. Approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square meters. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum was closed for 150 days in 2020, and attendance plunged by 72 percent to 2.7 million. Nonetheless, the Louvre still topped the list of most-visited art museums in the world in 2020.
The metre or meter is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). The SI unit symbol is m.
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,175,601 residents as of 2018, in an area of more than 105 square kilometres. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, science, and arts. The City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the region and province of Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated population of 12,174,880, or about 18 percent of the population of France as of 2017. The Paris Region had a GDP of €709 billion in 2017. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore and ahead of Zürich, Hong Kong, Oslo, and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on par with Singapore and Hong Kong, in 2018.
The president of France, officially the president of the French Republic, is the head of state and head of executive of France, as well as the commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces. As the presidency is the supreme magistracy of the country, the officeholder is the holder of the highest office in France.
Les Invalides, formally the Hôtel national des Invalides, also Hôtel des Invalides is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the buildings’ original purpose. The buildings house the Musée de l'Armée, the military museum of the Army of France, the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, and the Musée d'Histoire Contemporaine. The complex also includes the former hospital chapel, now national cathedral of the French military, and the adjacent former Royal Chapel known as the Dôme des Invalides, the tallest church building in Paris at a height of 107 meters. The latter has been converted into a shrine of some of France's leading military figures, most notably the tomb of Napoleon.
Réunion is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France. It is located approximately 550 km (340 mi) east of the island of Madagascar and 175 km (109 mi) southwest of the island of Mauritius. As of January 2021, it had a population of 858,450.
The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs is the ministry of the Government of France that handles France's foreign relations. Since 1855, its headquarters have been located at 37 Quai d'Orsay, close to the National Assembly. The term Quai d'Orsay is often used as a metonym for the ministry. Its cabinet minister, the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs is responsible for the foreign relations of France. The current officeholder, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was appointed in 2017.
The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, abbreviated INSEE, is the national statistics bureau of France. It collects and publishes information about the French economy and people and carries out the periodic national census. Headquartered in Montrouge, a commune in the southern Parisian suburbs, it is the French branch of Eurostat. The INSEE was created in 1946 as a successor to the Vichy regime's National Statistics Service (SNS). It works in close cooperation with the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED).
The National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral French Parliament under the Fifth Republic, the upper house being the Senate. The National Assembly's legislators are known as députés.
A grande école is a French institution of higher education that is separate from, but parallel and often connected to, the main framework of the French public university system. Grandes écoles are elite academic institutions that admit students through an extremely competitive process, and a significant proportion of their graduates occupy the highest levels of French society.
Paris Saint-Germain Football Club, commonly referred to as Paris Saint-Germain, PSG, Paris or Paris SG, is a professional football club based in Paris, France. They compete in Ligue 1, the top division of French football. France's most successful club, they have won over 40 official honours, including nine league titles and one major European trophy. Their home ground is the Parc des Princes.
The French Navy, informally La Royale, is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in the world, ranking seventh in combined fleet tonnage and fifth in number of naval vessels. The French Navy is one of eight currently operating fixed-wing aircraft carriers, with its flagship Charles de Gaulle being the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier outside the United States Navy, and the only non-American vessel to use catapults to launch aircraft.
The Conservatoire national des arts et métiers is a grand établissement and grande école of engineering, located in Paris, France. It is dedicated to provide education and conduct research for the promotion of science and industry. It has a large museum of inventions accessible to the public.
The Institut de France is a French learned society, grouping five académies, including the Académie Française. It was established in 1795 at the direction of the National Convention. Located on the Quai de Conti in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the Institute manages approximately 1,000 foundations, as well as museums and châteaux open for visit. It also awards prizes and subsidies, which amounted to a total of over €27 million per year in 2017. Most of these prizes are awarded by the Institute on the recommendation of the académies.
The Parc des Princes is an all-seater football stadium in Paris, France, in the south-west of the French capital, inside the 16th arrondissement, near the Stade Jean-Bouin and Stade Roland Garros.
The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the Ordre national du Mérite was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is the recognition of significant contributions to the arts, literature, or the propagation of these fields.
France, officially the French Republic, is a transcontinental country spanning Western Europe and overseas regions and territories in South America and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Including all of its territories, France has twelve time zones, the most of any country. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and several islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra and Spain in Europe, as well as the Netherlands, Suriname and Brazil in the Americas. Its eighteen integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi) and over 67 million people. France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre; other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.
Quebec is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. Quebec is the largest province by area and the second-largest by population. Much of the population lives in urban areas along the St. Lawrence River, between the most populous city, Montreal, and the provincial capital, Quebec City. Quebec is the home of the Québécois nation. Located in Central Canada, the province shares land borders with Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, New Brunswick to the southeast, and a coastal border with Nunavut; in the south it borders Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York in the United States.
Lyon or Lyons is the third-largest city and second-largest urban area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, about 470 km (292 mi) southeast of Paris, 320 km (199 mi) north of Marseille and 56 km (35 mi) northeast of Saint-Étienne. Inhabitants of the city are called Lyonnais (masculine) and Lyonnaises (feminine).
Overseas France consists of thirteen French-administered territories outside Europe, mostly remains of the French colonial empire that chose to remain a part of the French state under various statuses after decolonization. This collective name is used in everyday life in France but is not an administrative designation in its own right. Indeed, the five overseas regions have exactly the same administrative status as the metropolitan regions while the five overseas collectivities are semi-autonomous and New Caledonia is an autonomous territory. Overseas France includes island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, French Guiana on the South American continent, and several peri-Antarctic islands as well as a claim in Antarctica. Excluding the district of Adélie Land, where French sovereignty is effective de jure by French law, but where the French exclusive claim on this part of Antarctica is frozen by the Antarctic Treaty, overseas France covers a land area of 119,396 km2 (46,099 sq mi) and accounts for 18.0% of the French Republic's land territory. Its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 9,825,538 km2 (3,793,661 sq mi) accounts for 96.7% of the EEZ of the French Republic.
