The Lonely Planet Guide to France

Major Industries

Oil refining, steel, cement, aluminium, agricultural products & foodstuffs (wheat, barley, maize, cheese), luxury goods, chemicals, motor manufacturing, energy products, tourism.

Trading Partners

EU (especially Germany, Italy, UK), USA

Getting There and Away

Air France and scores of other airlines link Paris with every section of the globe. Other French cities with international air links (mainly to places within Europe) include Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Strasbourg and Toulouse. In France, inexpensive flights offered by discount airlines and charter clearing houses can be booked through many regular travel agents.

If you are doing a lot of travel around Europe, look for discount bus and train passes, which can be combined with discount airfares.

Buses are slower and less comfortable than trains, but they are cheaper, especially for people under 26, over 60, teacher and students.

Rail services link France with every country in Europe; schedules are available from major train stations in France and abroad. You can book tickets and get information from Rail Europe (www.raileurope.co.uk, www.raileurope.com) up to three months ahead.

Tickets for ferry travel to/from the UK, Channel Islands and Ireland are available from most travel agencies in France. In some cases, return fares cost less than two one-way tickets.

Getting Around

Air France (tel: 0820 820 820; www.airfrance.com) controls the lion's share of France's domestic airline industry although British budget carrier easyJet has flights linking Paris with Marseille, Nice and Toulouse.

France is eminently easy to cycle around. On train timetables, a bicycle symbol indicates that bicycles are allowed on particular trains. The SNCF baggage service Sernam (tel: 0825 84 58 45) will transport your bicycle (or any other luggage) door-to-door or station-to-station for a fee.

Buses are used quite extensively for short-distance travel within départements, especially in rural areas with relatively few train lines (eg Brittany and Normandy) - but services are often slow and few and far between.

Having your own wheels brings freedom but it's expensive, and city parking and traffic are frequent headaches. Many of France's main motorways are subject to tolls based on the distance travelled - remember to factor in these costs if you're driving long-distance. Motorcyclists will find France great for touring: the websites www.viamichelin.com and www.autoroutes.fr both calculate how much you will pay in petrol and tolls for specified journeys. To hire a car in France you'll generally need to be over 21 years old and hold a valid driver's licence and an international credit card. Your credit card may cover CDW if you use it to pay for the car rental.

France's superb rail network reaches almost every part of the country. Many towns and villages not on the SNCF train and bus network are linked by intra-départmental bus lines. France's most important train lines radiate from Paris like the spokes of a wheel, making train travel between provincial towns situated on different 'spokes' rather slow. In some cases, you have to transit through Paris.

Abbaye du Mont St-Michel

It's difficult not to be impressed with your first sighting of the massive abbey, a soaring ensemble of buildings in a hotchpotch of architectural styles. The abbey is topped by a slender spire with a gilded copper statue of Michael the Archangel slaying a dragon. At night the whole structure is brilliantly illuminated.

Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris

This is the heart of the city, a French Gothic masterpiece and the focus of Catholic Paris for seven centuries. Built on a site occupied by earlier churches - and, a millennium before, a Gallo-Roman temple - it was begun in 1163 and completed in the 14th century. Distances from Paris to every part of France are measured from place du Parvis Notre Dame.

Basilique Ste-Madeleine

The Basilique itself has had a turbulent history. It had already been rebuilt several times between the 11th and 13th centuries, before being comprehensively trashed by the Huguenots in the 16th century before narrowly avoiding total desecration during the French Revolution. By the mid-19th century it was on the verge of total collapse; thankfully the philanthropic architect Viollet-le-Duc stepped in and helped restore the Basilique to its former glory. Today it's one of France's best-preserved (and most beautiful) churches - even if you're not in the slightest bit religious, it's hard not to be moved by the haunting sound of plainsong echoing from the abbey's ancient walls.

For more information visit: http://www.vezelaytourisme.com

Château de Versailles

The chateau at Versailles counts 700 rooms, 2153 windows, 352 chimneys and 67 staircases under 11 hectares of roof set on 800 hectares of garden, park and wood, including 200,000 trees and 210,000 flowers newly planted each year. There are 50 fountains and 620 fountain nozzles. The walls and rooms are adorned with 6300 paintings, 2100 sculptures and statues, 15,000 engravings and 5000 decorative art objects and furnishings.

For more information visit: http://www.chateauversailles.fr

Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower, named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, is 324m (1063ft) high, including the TV antenna at the tip. This figure can vary by as much as 15cm, however, as the tower's 10,000 tonnes of iron, held together by 2.5 million rivets, expand in warm weather and contract when it's cold.

For more information visit: http://www.tour-eiffel.fr

Pre 20th Century History

Humans have inhabited France for about 90,000 years. The Celtic Gauls arrived between 1500 and 500 BC; after several centuries of conflict with Rome, Gauls lost the territory to Julius Caesar in 52 BC, and by the 2nd century AD the region had been partly Christianised. In the 5th century the Franks (thus 'France') and other Germanic groups overran the country.

The Middle Ages were marked by a succession of power struggles between warring Frankish dynasties. The Capetian Dynasty was a time of prosperity and scholarly revivalism despite continued battles with England over feudal rights. During this period, France was also embroiled in the Crusades, a holy war instigated by the Church against non-Christians. The Capetian Dynasty waned by the early 15th century as France continued to fight England in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), which featured 17-year-old firebrand Jeanne d'Arc.

Religious and political persecution, culminating in the Wars of Religion (1562-98), continued to threaten France's stability during the 16th century. In 1572, some 3000 Protestant Huguenots were slaughtered in Paris. The Huguenots were later guaranteed religious, civil and political rights. By the early 17th century the country was held in thrall by Cardinal Richelieu, who moved to establish an absolute monarchy and increase French power in Europe.

Louis XIV (the Sun King) ascended the throne in 1643 at the age of five and ruled until 1715. Throughout his reign, he hounded the Protestant minority, quashed the feuding aristocracy and created the first centralised French state. But as the 18th century progressed, the ancien régime (old order) became dangerously out of sync with the rest of the country, and was further weakened by the Enlightenment's anti-establishment and anticlerical ideas. France's involvement in the Seven Years' War (1756-63) and the American War of Independence (1776-83) was financially ruinous for the monarchy, and the latter provided ammunition for opponents of French absolutism.

When the king tried to neutralise the power of reform-minded economists, the urban masses took to the streets. On 14 July 1789, a Parisian mob attacked the Invalides, seized weapons and stormed the Bastille prison, the ultimate symbol of the despotism of the ancien régime. At first, the Revolution was in the hands of moderates, but from this milieu emerged the radical Jacobins, led by Robespierre, Danton and Marat. They established the First Republic in 1792, holding virtual dictatorial control over the country during the Reign of Terror (1793-94), which saw mass executions and religious persecution. Ultimately the Revolution turned on its own, and many of its leaders, including Robespierre and Danton, were pruned by Madame la Guillotine.

Buoyed by a series of military victories abroad, mercurial Napoleon Bonaparte assumed domestic power in 1799, sparking a series of wars in which France came to control most of Europe. Ultimately, a disastrous campaign against Russia in 1812 led to Bony's downfall - he was banished to the tiny Mediterranean island of Elba. His escape and reinstallation as Emperor lasted 100 days before he was defeated by the English at Waterloo. The English exiled him to the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. Napoleon is remembered as a great hero not so much for his military gusto but because he preserved the bulk of changes wrought by the Revolution and promulgated the Napoleonic Code, which remains the basis of the French legal system.

During the 19th century, France was characterised by inept government, quixotic wars and the founding of the Third Republic (1870). The importance of the army and the church was reduced, and separation of church and state was instituted. Around the same time, the Entente Cordiale ended colonial rivalry between France and Britain in Africa, creating a spirit of cooperation.

Modern History

France's involvement in WWI came at high cost: over a million troops were killed, large parts of the country were devastated, industrial production dropped and the franc was seriously devalued. The country fared little better during WWII, when it capitulated to Germany and the lackey Vichy government was installed. General Charles de Gaulle, France's under-secretary of war, set up a government-in-exile and underground resistance in London. France was liberated by Allied forces in mid-1944.

De Gaulle returned to Paris and set up a provisional government, but resigned as president in 1946. Emboldened by American aid, the French reasserted colonial control in Indochina, but their forces were defeated by Ho Chi Minh's cadres at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. France also tried to suppress Algerian independence. De Gaulle returned to power in 1958 and negotiated an end to the war in Algeria four years later; in the meantime, almost all of the other French colonies in Africa had achieved independence.

In May 1968, student protesters and striking workers surprised themselves and the world at large by bringing the country to a standstill. Just as anarchy was poised to engulf France, De Gaulle went on national television and told everybody to calm down, go home and leave the running of the country to him. And they did. The government then reformed the higher education system, and De Gaulle resigned as president the following year.

Resilient socialist François Mitterand was France's president from 1981 to 1995. In May 1995 he was succeeded by Jacques Chirac, who defeated the demoralised socialists and Jean-Marie Le Pen's anti-immigrant Front National (FN). A series of bombings in Paris and Lyon from July 1995 by terrorists protesting French support of the Algerian government contributed to anti-foreigner sentiment and lent a false legitimacy to the FN's racist stance.

Chirac strongly endorsed the European Union (EU), which raised his popularity, but his decision to conduct nuclear tests on the Polynesian island of Mururoa towards the end of 1995 was met with a local and international outcry. France's Pacific and Caribbean colonies have beefed up their independence rumblings, with Tahiti a recent site of particular agitation. Domestically, limits which Chirac imposed on the welfare payment system resulted in the country's largest protests since 1968. Strikes throughout the public sector over several weeks in late 1995 brought Paris to a standstill and affected the economy so badly that France's qualifications for joining the EU looked dubious.

Chirac called a snap election early in 1997, under the pretence of seeking a mandate for the final push towards meeting economic monetary union (EMU) controls. However, he did not count on the fickleness of the French people and his RPR party was ousted from government (though Chirac remains president) by an unlikely alliance between the socialists, communists and Greens.

Recent History

The nation was thrust into the international spotlight with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car accident in Paris in August 1997, and the country's first-ever World Cup victory (3-0 over odds-on favourite Brazil) in July 1998.

Presidential elections in 2002 were a shocker with racist demagogue Jean-Marie Le Pen of the FN claiming 17% of the national first round vote. In the run-off poll left-wing voters - without a candidate of their own - went for 'lesser-of-two-evils' Chirac to give him 82% of votes.

In early 2003 France was once again in the world spotlight when it insisted it would veto any UN security council resolution to go to war with Iraq. The US was rather miffed by this, and relations between France and the US remain cool.

In May 2005, a national referendum on the proposed European Constitution was soundly rejected by French voters, causing huge embarrassment to the government, and placing a considerable question mark over the country's resolutely pro-European future.

In October and November 2005, the country was rocked by several weeks of violent clashes between police and gangs of disenfranchised young people across France. The riots were sparked by the deaths of two teenagers of North-African descent who were electrocuted while apparently attempting to hide from the police, and began in the poor, ethnically-diverse banlieues (suburbs) of Paris, but quickly spread to several of the country's major cities.

In May 2007 conservative Nicolas Sarkozy convincingly defeated socialist Segolene Royale in the presidential election. The former interior minister is seen by supporters as a charismatic, dynamic leader and by opponents as a divisive, power-hungry neo-con. High on his list of priorities is rebuilding the Franco-American relationship, severely damaged by France's unreserved opposition to the Iraq War, and reinvigorating the French role in Europe.

This is a much-trumpeted study of national passions, peculiarities and perspectives.

A digressive and fanciful account of the author's 1765 coach tour through France and Italy.

A reminder of the connection between hoofing it through remote regions and the increasing prettiness of Eeyore.

This is a classic work of travel literature about France.

A highly entertaining novel that pays homage to the great French writer Flaubert.

Gertrude Stein memorably recounts her years in Paris.

A portrayal of bohemian life in Paris between the wars.

An exhaustive review of all aspects of modern-day French society.

A penetrating and poignant look at down-at-heel Paris in the late 1920s.

First published in 1958, this is a very tasty - indeed, the definitive - region-by-region introduction to French cuisine.

A pioneering work on women's position in society that helped inspire the modern feminist movement.

A reasonably contemporary exposition which charts the progress of feminism in France from 1968 to the mid-1980s.

For the dynamics of political history, check out this influential and truly monumental work that examines the first few years after the storming of the Bastille in 1789.

This readable three-volume set covers the period from Louis XIV to 1962; the best of the general studies of French history.

Along with Tropic of Capricorn, this is one of Miller's 'sexy' novels set in Paris.

A best-selling account that takes a witty, patronising and very English look at the French.

An alternative and often giggle-worthy slant on France's greatest cycling race.

The story of the rise and fall of a poor young man from the provinces who models himself on Napoleon. A must read classic of 19th-century french literature.

Letters, testimonies and trial notes from the 15th century document the meteoric rise and fall of Joan of Arc.

Portrays France's most magnificent mountain in all its soaring splendour. 200-odd pages of stunning photographs.

Beautifully-written overview of Corsica's culture, history and people, penned by a British historian-writer who lived most of her life on the island.