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About-France.com
- the connoisseur's guide to France
The
south of France from the Riviera to the Pyrenees
Click any yellowed area on the
map to open up a more
detailed page or
pages.
For more detail, see
Languedoc
and
Provence-Côte
d'Azur regional pages
►
See also; city guides:
Nice
Marseilles
Nimes
![](../photos/cote-azur.jpg)
The area that makes up what the
French refer to as
"le
Midi",
is generally speaking the most popular tourist region in France, and
needs little introduction. It consists of the
French Mediterranean
coastline and its hinterland, from the Italian to the Spanish
borders, and is made up of two French regions, PACA or
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur to the east of the Rhone, and
Languedoc Roussillon to the west of the Rhone.
. The coastal region is very busy in Summer,
and travelling to the south of France by car on a summer Saturday can
be a nightmare experience; but the region has masses to offer, in terms
of climate, history, and landscape.
The
French
Riviera
("la Côte d'Azur") is a small part of the south of France,
the thin coastal
strip from around Cassis (east of Marseille) in the west to the Italian
border in the east. It is a coastline that gets very crowded in summer,
though on account of the rocky coastline, there are still some quiet
and peaceful spots to be found, for instance around
Saint-Raphaël.
![Briançon in the southern Alps](../photos/2014/briancon.jpg)
Briançon, in
the southern Alps
However much of the actual coast of the French
Riviera is fairly heavily built up in many parts, and
accommodation is expensive, particularly in the most famous resorts
like St. Tropez, Cannes or
Nice.
The mountainous hinterland, on the
other hand, the "Alpes de Haute Provence" the "Hautes Alpes"
the "Alpes Maritimes", is
very attractive, with its small villages and towns, many of them
perched precariously on hillsides or beside trickling rivers that
become raging torrents in the springtime. The southern Alps are
different from the northern Alps – drier, more rocky, and
less crowded. Briançon, capital of the High Alps department,
is the highest small city in Europe. And the
Gorges du Verdon
are the
deepest in Europe.
![Languedoc beach](../photos3/languedoc-beach-2.jpg)
Beach
in the Languedoc
Those who do not want to
spend their holidays being mass-grilled on a beach will prefer areas
inland from the coastal strip, notably to the hills and mountains of
Provence,with
their dry landscapes and deep river gorges and valleys, or the valleys
of the
Cevennes, more wooded and rural, or the
inland areas of the
Languedoc.
The historic area of Provence (which used to include land to
the
west of the Rhone as well as the east) has a lot of historic cities,
such as Avignon with its famous bridge, Arles with its
Roman remains, the
Camargue,
and the
university town of Aix en Provence.
The
Languedoc
region
is the area to the west of the Rhone; it is known on the one hand for
its long sandy beaches, and onthe other for its huge
vineyards and "garrigue", arid rocky Mediteranean hills with their
vegetation of
scrub, aromatic bushes and occasional fields. The most historic city is
Nimes
with its
superb Roman remains. High Languedoc includes
the southern
flank of the
Massif
Central mountains, a dry mountainous area a bit
different to upper
Provence, and cut through by deep valleys such as that of the Tarn.
![Maison carrée nimes](../photos-15/maison-carree-nimes.jpg)
Nimes' Maison
Carrée - a
finely preserved Roman
temple
The Languedoc coast offers large expanses of sandy beaches,
between
popular modern resorts such as Cap d'Agde or Le Grau du Roi. For those
looking for lots of life and restaurants and bars, the Languedoc coast
has plenty to offer; but with its some 200 km of sandy coasts,
Languedoc also has some fairly uncrowded beaches, even in high summer.
The
southern end on the Languedoc includes the eastern end of the
Pyrenees,
a natural land barrier between France and Spain. The foothills of the
Pyrenees are a beautiful mild part of France, famous for fruit and
flowers. It is an arid part of France that was frequently fought over
in the Middle Ages, and the famous "
Cathar castles"
and the fortifications of the city of
Carcassonne
stand witness today to this troubled past. the eastern Pyrenees can be
discovered by taking an exciting journey on the historic
Yellow train
up into the mountains.
For further west, towards the Atlantic, see
Gascony .
Main
cities:
Perpignan, Montpellier,
Marseilles,
Toulon, Cannes,
Nice
Tourist
attractions in
the south of France:
See details on regional information pages:
Accommodation: