The economy of France is a highly developed social market economy with notable state participation in strategic sectors. It is the world's seventh-largest economy by nominal GDP and the ninth-largest economy by PPP, constituting around 4% of world GDP. Due to a volatile currency exchange rate, France's GDP as measured in dollars fluctuates sharply. France has a diversified economy, that is dominated by the service sector, whilst the industrial sector accounted for 19.5% of its GDP and the primary sector accounted for the remaining 1.7%. In 2020, France was the largest Foreign Direct Investment recipient in Europe, and Europe's second largest spender in research and development. It was ranked among the 10 most innovative countries in the world by the 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index, as well as the 15th most competitive nation globally according to the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report. It was the fifth-largest trading nation in the world. France is also the most visited destination in the world, as well as the European Union's leading agricultural power.
La Défense, the financial hub of France
Change in per capita GDP of France, 1820–2018. Figures are inflation-adjusted to 2011 International dollars.
A Peugeot 508 SW
A wheat field in Villiers-le-Bâcle. France is the EU's largest agricultural producer.
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. It also includes overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north, Germany to the north east, Switzerland to the east, Italy and Monaco to the south east, Andorra and Spain to the south, and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the north west. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Its eighteen integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi) and have a total population of 68.4 million as of January 2024. France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre; other major urban areas include Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nantes and Nice.
The Maison Carrée was a temple of the Gallo-Roman city of Nemausus (present-day Nîmes) and is one of the best-preserved vestiges of the Roman Empire.
With Clovis's conversion to Catholicism in 498, the Frankish monarchy, elective and secular until then, became hereditary and of divine right.
Joan of Arc led the French Army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), which paved the way for the final victory.
Louis XIV, the "Sun King", was the absolute monarch of France and made France the leading European power.