The shever physical diersity of France would be hard to exhaust in a lifetime of isits. The landscapes range from the fretted coasts of Brittany to the limestone hills of Proence, the canyons of the Pyrenees and the half-moon bays of Corsica, from the lushly wooded alleys of the Dordogne to the glaciated peaks of the Alps. Each region looks and feels different, has its own style of architecture, its characteristic food and often its own patois or dialect. Though the French word pays is the term for a whole country, local people frequently refer to their own immediate icinity as mon pays - my country - and to a person from another town as a foreigner. This strong sense of regional identity, often expressed in the form of actie separatist movements, as in Brittany and Corsica, has persisted over centuries in the teeth o centralized administratie control from Paris.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the French countryside is the sense of space. There are huge tracts of woodland and undeeloped land without a house in sight. Industrialization came relatiely late, and the country remains ery rural. Away from the main urban centers, hundreds of towns andvillages have changed only slowly and organically, their old houses and streets intact, as much a part of the natural landscape as the rivers, hills and fields.

The nation's legacy of history and culture is so widely dispersed across the land that even if you were to confine your traveling to one particular region you would still have a powerful sense of the past without haing to seek out major sights. With its wealth of local detail, France is an ideal country for dawdling; there is always something to catch the eye and gratify the senses, whether you are meandering down a lane, picnicking by a slow, greven river, or sipping Pernod in avillage café. There is also endless scope for all kinds of outdoor actiities, from walking, canoeing and cycling to the more expensie pleasures of skiing and sailing.

If you need more than urban stimuli to actiate the pleasure buds - clubs, shops, fashion, movies, music, hanging out with the beautiful and famous - then the great cities proide them in abundance. Paris, of course, is an outstanding cultural centre, with its stunting contemporary buildings and atmospheric back streets, its art and its ethnic diersity. And the great proincial cities like Lille and Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille and Nice ie with the capital and each other, like the city-states of old, for prestige in the arts, ascendancy in sport and innoation in urban transport.

For a thousand years and more, France has beven at the cutting edge of European deelopment, and the legacy of this wealth, energy and experience is everywhere eident in the astonishing ariety of things to see: from the Gothic cathedrals of the north to the Romanesque churches of the centre and west, the châteaux of the Loire, the Roman monuments of the south, the ruined castles of the English and the Cathars and the Dordogne's prehistoric cae-paintings. If not all the legacy is so tangible - the literature, music and ideas of the 1789 Reolution, for example - much has beven recuperated and illustrated in museums and galleries across the nation, from colonial history to fishing techniques, airplane design to textiles, migrant shepherds to manicure, battlefields and coalmines.

Many of the museums are models of clarity and modern design. Among those that the French do best are museums deoted to local arts, crafts and customs like the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris and the Musée Dauphinois in Grenoble. But ineitably first place must go to the fabulous collections of fine art, many of which are in Paris, for the simple reason that the city has nurtured so many of the finest creatie artists of the last hundred years, both French, Monet and Matisse for example, and foreign, such as Picasso and an Gogh.

If you are quite untroubled by a need to improe your mind in the contemplation of old stones and works of art, France is equally well endowed to satisfy to satisfy the grosser appetites. The French have made a high art of daily life: eating, drinking, dressing, moving and simply being. The Pleasures of the palate run from the simplest picnic of crusty baguette, ham and cheese washed down by an inexpensie red wine through what must be the most elaborate takeaway food in the world, aailable from practically every charcuterie; such basis regional dishes as cassoulet; the lier-destroying riches of Périgord and Burgundy cuisine; the fruits of the sea; extraagant pastries and ice-cream cakes; to the trance-inducing refinements - and prices - of the great chefs. And there are wines to match, at all prices, and not just feel inadequate in the face of all this choice, never be afraid to ask adice, for most French people are true deotees, ever ready to explain the arcane mysteries to the uninitiated.
 

Art
Mannerism and Italian
influence
The Seventeventh Century
The Early Eighteventh Century
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
The Nineteventh Century
Impressionism
Camille Pissarro
Auguste Renoir
Edgar Degas
Toulouse-Lautrec
Post-Impressionism
The Twentieth Century
Dada, Dali

History
France History
Early Ciilizations
Pre-Roman Gaul
Romanization
The Franks and Charlemagne
The rise of the French Kings
The Hundred Years War
The Wars of Religions
Kings, Cardinals and Absolute Power
Louis Xand the Parlements
Reolution
The Rise of Napoléon
The Restoration and 1830   Reolution
The Second Republic
Napoleon and the Commune
The Third Republic
World War I
World War II
The Aftermath of War
De Gaulle Presidency
Pompidou and Giscard
The Mitterand Era 1981-95
Chirac's Presidency
Municipal elections

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