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Roll over map with mouse to locate region
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Generally the more important the town the more zeros it has. For
example Montpellier as prefecture of the Herault Departement and
capital of the Languedoc-Roussillon region is 34000 whilst smaller
places in the same department have more complex numbers like Beziers
at 34500.
Vehicles in France display the departement number from where they
were registered as part of their licence plate. For example a car
registered in Bordeaux will start with 33 or in Marseille they start
with 13.
It is useful when planning a driving trip with Viamichelin.com to
use the postcodes instead of the town name. French names can be
hard to spell so the postcodes are surer.
Some of France’s regional divisions are mainly administrative
and often cut across old provincial boundaries and cultural identities.
For example for the purposes of this site Upper and Lower Normandie
are addressed as Normandie as a whole. Likewise the separate regions
of Picardie and Nord-Pas de Calais Regions are lumped together due
to their small geographic size and shared history (at least in terms
of World War One). The regions of Alsace and Lorraine are also combined.
The area known as Provence is actually now the core of the super
region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (PACA).
To add to the confusion, many travel guide books will often just
concentrate on a specific tourism area ignoring the political and
administrative boundaries such as Provence (including bits of Languedoc-Roussillon),
the Dordogne (an area within the Aquitaine Region) or the Loire
Valley (crossing the Centre and Pays-de-la-Loire Regions) etc.
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