Everything on the site, by section
Sixteen pieces. Five sections. The complete list.
The lines were redrawn in 2016 and nobody moved
Thirteen regions, and the identities underneath them.
- Twenty-two regions became thirteen and nothing else changed
The 2016 reform merged regions on a map without merging what people call themselves. Grand Est is an administrative unit; Alsace is not.
- Brittany writes Kemper under Quimper on purpose
Bilingual signage is policy, not decoration, and Breton's legal position is different from Welsh or Catalan in ways that show on the road.
- You can read the border in the pitch of a roof
Alsace keeps German in its wine bottles, its roof angles and its half-timbering, because it kept changing hands.
- Three days of wind counts as an explanation
In Provence the wind is named, expected, and accepted as a reason.
- The north is built from brick and does not apologise
Coalfield towns, belfries and brick terraces — a France that looks nothing like the one on the posters.
Bread twice a day, and a country that shuts in August
The habits that are not preferences.
- Bread is bought twice a day because it dies overnight
A baguette de tradition has four permitted ingredients and no preservative, which is why the queue happens twice and why the loaf is stale by evening.
- The market is a timetable, not a place
Each commune has its day, and the same traders rotate between them. Miss it and you wait a week.
- The pharmacy sign means more than a shop
Pharmacies are limited by population, run on a rota, and do things a British chemist does not.
Every line runs to Paris, including the ones that should not
The star network and what it costs the provinces.
- Lyon to Bordeaux is harder than either to Paris
The network radiates from the capital, so cross-country journeys are slow and expensive in a country that built the fastest trains in Europe.
- A ring road that decides who is inside
The périphérique is infrastructure and boundary at once, and 'intra-muros' is a social term as much as a geographic one.
- The slow trains are the ones that hold the country together
Regional services carry the commuting that the TGV never touches, and their funding is decided by regions rather than the state.
The road signs are in two languages and one of them is older
Breton, Alsatian, Occitan, and the Académie.
- Forty people, and no actual power
The Académie française rules on French and is routinely ignored, which is itself a reliable feature of the language.
- France recognised its own languages late and reluctantly
Breton, Occitan, Alsatian and Corsican survived a century of active discouragement in schools; the constitutional position is still awkward.
September is the real new year
La rentrée, the ponts, and the August shutdown.
- The country restarts in September, all at once
La rentrée is school, politics, publishing and work resuming on the same week, and everything from book releases to legislation is scheduled around it.
- In August the shutter comes down and stays down
Congés annuels close small businesses for weeks. It is not a rumour and it catches newcomers every year.
- May is mostly bridges
A cluster of public holidays falling midweek produces the ponts, and the calendar is planned around them months ahead.