Armenia
Armenia the Republic of Armenia, is a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located in Western Asia on the Armenian Highlands, it is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh and Azerbaijan to the east, Iran and Azerbaijan's exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Armenia is a multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. Urartu was established in 860 BC and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia; the Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great in the 1st century BC and became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion in the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. The official date of state adoption of Christianity is 301; the ancient Armenian kingdom was split between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires around the early 5th century. Under the Bagratuni dynasty, the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia was restored in the 9th century. Declining due to the wars against the Byzantines, the kingdom fell in 1045 and Armenia was soon after invaded by the Seljuk Turks.
An Armenian principality and a kingdom Cilician Armenia was located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea between the 11th and 14th centuries. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the traditional Armenian homeland composed of Eastern Armenia and Western Armenia came under the rule of the Ottoman and Iranian empires ruled by either of the two over the centuries. By the 19th century, Eastern Armenia had been conquered by the Russian Empire, while most of the western parts of the traditional Armenian homeland remained under Ottoman rule. During World War I, Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated in the Armenian Genocide. In 1918, following the Russian Revolution, all non-Russian countries declared their independence after the Russian Empire ceased to exist, leading to the establishment of the First Republic of Armenia. By 1920, the state was incorporated into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, in 1922 became a founding member of the Soviet Union.
In 1936, the Transcaucasian state was dissolved, transforming its constituent states, including the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, into full Union republics. The modern Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Armenia recognises the Armenian Apostolic Church, the world's oldest national church, as the country's primary religious establishment; the unique Armenian alphabet was invented by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 AD. Armenia is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Council of Europe and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Armenia supports the de facto independent Artsakh, proclaimed in 1991; the original native Armenian name for the country was Հայք, however it is rarely used. The contemporary name Հայաստան became popular in the Middle Ages by addition of the Persian suffix -stan.. However the origins of the name Hayastan trace back to much earlier dates and were first attested in circa 5th century in the works of Agathangelos, Faustus of Byzantium, Ghazar Parpetsi and Sebeos.
The name has traditionally been derived from Hayk, the legendary patriarch of the Armenians and a great-great-grandson of Noah, according to the 5th-century AD author Moses of Chorene, defeated the Babylonian king Bel in 2492 BC and established his nation in the Ararat region. The further origin of the name is uncertain, it is further postulated that the name Hay comes from one of the two confederated, Hittite vassal states—the Ḫayaša-Azzi. The exonym Armenia is attested in the Old Persian Behistun Inscription as Armina; the Ancient Greek terms Ἀρμενία and Ἀρμένιοι are first mentioned by Hecataeus of Miletus. Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BC, he relates that the people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. According to the histories of both Moses of Chorene and Michael Chamchian, Armenia derives from the name of Aram, a lineal descendant of Hayk.
The Table of Nations lists Aram as the son of Shem, to whom the Book of Jubilees attests, "And for Aram there came forth the fourth portion, all the land of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates to the north of the Chaldees to the border of the mountains of Asshur and the land of'Arara." Jubilees 8:21 apportions the Mountains of Ararat to Shem, which Jubilees 9:5 expounds to be apportioned to Aram. The historian Flavius Josephus states in his Antiquities of the Jews, "Aram had the Aramites, which the Greeks called Syrians. Of the four sons of Aram, Uz founded Trachonitis and Damascus: this country lies between Palestine and Celesyria. Ul founded Armenia. Armenia lies in the highlands surrounding the mountains of Ararat. There is evidence of an early civilisation in Armenia in the Bronze Age and earlier, dating to about 4000 BC. Archaeological surveys in 2010 and 2011 at the Areni-1 cave complex have resulted in the discovery of the world's earliest known leather shoe and wine-producing facility.
According to the story of Hayk, the legendary founder of Armenia, around 2107 BC Hayk fought against Belus, the Babylonian God of War, at Çavuştepe along the Engil river to establish the first Armenian state. This event coinc
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, 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 Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Île-de-France
Île-de-France called the région parisienne, contains the city of Paris, is the most populous of the 18 regions of France. It covers 12,012 square kilometres, or two percent of the national territory, has official estimated population of 12,213,364 as of January 1, 2019, or 18.2% of the population of France. The region accounts for nearly 30 percent of the French Gross Domestic Product; the region is made up of eight administrative departments: Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Seine-et-Marne, Val-de-Marne, Val-d'Oise and Yvelines. It was created as the "District of the Paris Region" in 1961 renamed in 1976 after the historic province of Île-de-France, when its status was aligned with the other French administrative regions created in 1972. Residents are sometimes referred to an administrative word created in the 1980s; the GDP of the region in 2016 was €681 billion. It has the highest per-capita GDP among regions in France and the third-highest of regions in the European Union. In 2018 all of the twenty-eight French companies listed in the Fortune Global 500 had their headquarters in the Paris region.
Besides the landmarks of Paris, the region has many important historic sites, including the Palace of Versailles and the Palace of Fontainebleau, as well as the most-visited tourist attraction in France, Disneyland Paris. Although the modern name Île-de-France means "Island of France", the etymology is in fact unclear; the "island" may refer to the land between the rivers Oise and Seine, or it may have been a reference to the Île de la Cité, where the French royal palace and cathedral were located. The Île-de-France was inhabited by the Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; the Parisii minted their own coins for that purpose. The Romans began their settlement on Paris's Left Bank, it became a prosperous city with a forum, temples, an amphitheatre. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city.
As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île-de-la-Citie failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris's strategic importance—with its bridges preventing ships from passing—was established by successful defence in the Siege of Paris. In 987, Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Duke of the Franks, was elected King of the Franks. Under the rule of the Capetian kings, Paris became the largest and most prosperous city in France; the Kings of France enjoyed getting away from Paris and hunting in the game-filled forests of the region. They built palatial hunting lodges, most notably Palace of Fontainebleau and the Palace of Versailles. From the time of Louis XIV until the French Revolution, Versailles was the official residence of the Kings and the seat of the French government; the Ile-de-France became the term used for the territory of Paris and the surrounding province, administered directly by the King.
During the French Revolution, the royal provinces were abolished and divided into departments, the city and region were governed directly by the national government. In the period after World War II, as Paris faced a major housing shortage, hundreds of massive apartment blocks for low-income residents were built around the edges of Paris. In the 1950s and the 1960s, Many thousands of immigrants settled in the communes bordering the city. In 1959, under President Charles De Gaulle, a new region was created out of six departments, which corresponded with the historic region, with the name District de la région de Paris. On 6 May 1976, as part of the process of regionalisation, the district was reconstituted and increased administrative and political powers and renamed the Île-de-France region. Île-de-France has a land area of 12,011 km2. It is composed of eight départements centered on Paris. Around the département of Paris, urbanization fills a first concentric ring of three departments known as the petite couronne, extends into a second outer ring of four départements known as the grande couronne.
The former département of Seine, abolished in 1968, included the city proper and parts of the petite couronne. The petite couronne consists of the départements of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, the grande couronne of those of Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines and Val-d'Oise. Politically, the region is divided into 8 départements, 25 arrondissements, 155 cantons and 1 276 communes, out of the total of 35 416 in metropolitan France, The outer parts of the Ile-de-France remain rural. Agriculture land and natu
Javel, France
The Javel neighborhood is the 60th administrative district of Paris situated in the 15th arrondissement. Situated on 261 hectares, the neighborhood is bordered to the north by Rue Linois and Rue des Entrepreneurs, to the east by Rue de la Croix-Nivert and Rue Lecourbe, to the south by the Paris - Issy-les-Moulineaux heliport, to the west by the Seine. In the 15th century, the neighborhood was named "Javetz" and situated to the south of the Grenelle plain bordering the Seine and to the west of Paris; the neighborhood was founded as a boat garage. The region became better known starting in the 17th century for its windmill and its stylish gathering spots frequented by swimmers and boaters. From the 19th to the 20th century, the name of this place was spelled "Javelle". Before its annexation to Paris in 1860, it was part of the commune of Issy. Afterwards, it became industrialized with the installation of electric plants and automobile factories; the Citroën factories occupied a large section of the neighborhood until the 1970s-1980s.
The plant has been demolished. In this neighborhood, in a chemical factory founded in 1777, Claude Louis Berthollet studied and produced a disinfectant with a sodium hypochlorite base, known today in French as eau de Javel. Other industrial plants were set up in the neighborhood, including that of André Citroën in 1915; the factory was a munitions factory designed to support the war effort by the mass production of artillery shells. Following World War I, André Citroën used his experience in automobile construction acquired in the Mors factories, headquartered at 48 Rue du Théâtre, he applied the principles of Henry Ford after having discovering them on a trip to Detroit in 1913 and meeting Henry Ford. The factory in Javel was converted to an automobile production facility which went on to produce the first mass-produced European car: the Citroën Type A 10 HP; the automobile factory continued to produce cars until 1975. The company's headquarters permanently left its historic address at Quai de Javel.
The following became named after André Citröen: the André Citröen Park, the Collège André Citroën, the Quai André-Citroën the Quai de Javel. The neighborhood is occupied by the Parc André-Citroën, the Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou, many large buildings containing offices and television studios; the former Hôpital Boucicaut closed its doors at the end of the year 2000. The headquarters of the Imprimerie nationale at Rue de la Convention, closed in 2005; the site is now occupied by various offices of the Ministry of European Affairs. The following sites are found within the Javel neighborhood: the port de Javel, the Rue de Javel, the église Saint-Christophe-de-Javel, the Polypores fountain by Jean-Yves Lechevallier featured in the movie "Same Old Song" by Alain Resnais, the Gare de Javel on the C line of the RER, the métro station Javel-André Citroën on the 10 line. Additionally, to south of the Boulevard Périphérique is a small section of the 15th arrondissement, a parade ground and an airfield, but, now occupied by the Paris - Issy-les-Moulineaux heliport, a sports complex, a recreational center and a small housing community called Les Frères-Voisin.
Javel is served by the RATP. The neighborhood is served by the RER C and lines 8, 10, 12 of the métro; the neighborhood has in recent years been serviced by the newly constructed tramway line 2 and line 3a. Population of the Javel neighborhood: Historical quarters of Paris 15th arrondissement of Paris Eau de Javel Gare de Javel Church of Saint-Christophe-de-Javel Paris - Issy-les-Moulineaux Heliport
Château d'Issy
The Château d'Issy, at Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the Hauts-de-Seine department of France, was a small French Baroque château on the outskirts of Paris. It was destroyed during the Paris Commune of 1871; the small plot of land was bought in 1681 by the président à mortier Denis Talon, who commissioned the architect Pierre Bullet, a pupil of François Blondel, to design a small maison de plaisance. Denis Talon commissioned the landscape architect André Le Nôtre to construct a collection of fountains for the garden, while Pierre Desgots, Le Nôtre's brother-in-law, would carry out work on the park. At the time, Le Nôtre was undertaking modifications on the gardens of the Château de Meudon owned by the Grand Dauphin. Denis Talon died in 1698; the following year, on 4 February 1699, François Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, known as le Grand Conti, bought the estate for the sum of 140,000 livres. The wealthy Prince du sang undertook many modifications, which are thought to have been carried out by Bullet.
The Prince had the façades of the château redesigned and had a small "pavillon des bains" built. By the time of the Prince's death in 1709, the whole estate had been updated; the estate remained the property of the Princes of Conti until the Revolution of 1789, when it was confiscated as biens nationaux. Louis François de Bourbon, the grandson of the Grand Conti, lost his beloved wife at the château. Louise Diane d'Orléans was the daughter of the former Regent, she died in 1736, at the age of twenty, while giving birth to a stillborn child in 1736. After her death, her husband used the property; when the Bourbon Restoration bought the monarchy back to France, the château was sold several times. The 19th century saw the addition of a dovecote, an orangery and of a building similar to the 17th-century "pavillon des bains". During the Paris Commune of 1871, the château was left to burn, it stood in ruins for over forty years before being demolished in 1910. On, the town purchased a small part of the estate, sold off in lots.
That plot of land was transformed into Issy-les-Moulineaux municipal parc Henri Barbusse. The sculptor Auguste Rodin repurchased the pediment of the garden façade, as well as the avant-corps columns. A majority of the site is now the home of the Musée Français de la Carte à Jouer. Monuments historiques et bâtiments protégés d'Issy-les-Moulineaux
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were written to varying degrees. Latin functioned as the main medium of scholarly exchange, as the liturgical language of the Church, as the working language of science, literature and administration. Medieval Latin represented, in essence, a continuation of Classical Latin and Late Latin, with enhancements for new concepts as well as for the increasing integration of Christianity. Despite some meaningful differences from Classical Latin, Medieval writers did not regard it as a fundamentally different language. There is no real consensus on the exact boundary where Late Latin Medieval Latin begins; some scholarly surveys begin with the rise of early Ecclesiastical Latin in the middle of the 4th century, others around 500, still others with the replacement of written Late Latin by written Romance languages starting around the year 900.
The terms Medieval Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin are used synonymously, though some scholars draw distinctions. Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the form, used by the Roman Catholic Church, whereas Medieval Latin refers more broadly to all of the forms of Latin used in the Middle Ages; the Romance languages spoken in the Middle Ages were referred to as Latin, since the Romance languages were all descended from Classical, or Roman, Latin itself. Medieval Latin had an enlarged vocabulary, which borrowed from other sources, it was influenced by the language of the Vulgate, which contained many peculiarities alien to Classical Latin that resulted from a more or less direct translation from Greek and Hebrew. Greek provided much of the technical vocabulary of Christianity; the various Germanic languages spoken by the Germanic tribes, who invaded southern Europe, were major sources of new words. Germanic leaders became the rulers of parts of the Roman Empire that they conquered, words from their languages were imported into the vocabulary of law.
Other more ordinary words were replaced by coinages from Vulgar Latin or Germanic sources because the classical words had fallen into disuse. Latin was spread to areas such as Ireland and Germany, where Romance languages were not spoken, which had never known Roman rule. Works written in those lands where Latin was a learned language, having no relation to the local vernacular influenced the vocabulary and syntax of medieval Latin. Since subjects like science and philosophy, including Argumentation theory and Ethics, were communicated in Latin, the Latin vocabulary that developed for them became the source of a great many technical words in modern languages. English words like abstract, communicate, matter and their cognates in other European languages have the meanings given to them in medieval Latin; the influence of Vulgar Latin was apparent in the syntax of some medieval Latin writers, although Classical Latin continued to be held in high esteem and studied as models for literary compositions.
The high point of the development of medieval Latin as a literary language came with the Carolingian renaissance, a rebirth of learning kindled under the patronage of Charlemagne, king of the Franks. Alcuin was an important writer in his own right. Although it was developing into the Romance languages, Latin itself remained conservative, as it was no longer a native language and there were many ancient and medieval grammar books to give one standard form. On the other hand speaking there was no single form of "medieval Latin"; every Latin author in the medieval period spoke Latin as a second language, with varying degrees of fluency and syntax. Grammar and vocabulary, were influenced by an author's native language; this was true beginning around the 12th century, after which the language became adulterated: late medieval Latin documents written by French speakers tend to show similarities to medieval French grammar and vocabulary. For instance, rather than following the classical Latin practice of placing the verb at the end, medieval writers would follow the conventions of their own native language instead.
Whereas Latin had no definite or indefinite articles, medieval writers sometimes used forms of unus as an indefinite article, forms of ille as a definite article or quidam as something like an article. Unlike classical Latin, where esse was the only auxiliary verb, medieval Latin writers might use habere as an auxiliary, similar to constructions in Germanic and Romance languages; the accusative and infinitive construction in classical Latin was replaced by a subordinate clause introduced by quod or quia. This is identical, for example, to the use of que in similar constructions in French. In every age from the late 8th century onwards, there were learned writers who were familiar enough with classical syntax to be aware that these forms and usages were "wrong" and resisted their use, thus the Latin of a theologian like St Thomas Aquinas or of an erudite clerical historian such as William of Tyre tends to avoid most of the characteristics described above, showing its p
Communes of France
The commune is a level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities in the United States and Canada, Gemeinden in Germany, comuni in Italy or ayuntamiento in Spain; the United Kingdom has no exact equivalent, as communes resemble districts in urban areas, but are closer to parishes in rural areas where districts are much larger. Communes are based on historical geographic communities or villages and are vested with significant powers to manage the populations and land of the geographic area covered; the communes are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France. Communes vary in size and area, from large sprawling cities with millions of inhabitants like Paris, to small hamlets with only a handful of inhabitants. Communes are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance. All communes have names, but not all named geographic areas or groups of people residing together are communes, the difference residing in the lack of administrative powers.
Except for the municipal arrondissements of its largest cities, the communes are the lowest level of administrative division in France and are governed by elected officials with extensive autonomous powers to implement national policy. A commune is city, or other municipality. "Commune" in English has a historical bias, implies an association with socialist political movements or philosophies, collectivist lifestyles, or particular history. There is nothing intrinsically different between commune in French; the French word commune appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin communia, for a large gathering of people sharing a common life. As of January 2015, there were 36,681 communes in France, 36,552 of them in metropolitan France and 129 of them overseas; this is a higher total than that of any other European country, because French communes still reflect the division of France into villages or parishes at the time of the French Revolution. The whole territory of the French Republic is divided into communes.
This is unlike some other countries, such as the United States, where unincorporated areas directly governed by a county or a higher authority can be found. There are only a few exceptions: COM of Saint-Martin, it was a commune inside the Guadeloupe région. The commune structure was abolished when Saint-Martin became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007. COM of Wallis and Futuna, which still is divided according to the three traditional chiefdoms. COM of Saint Barthélemy, it was a commune inside the Guadeloupe region. The commune structure was abolished when Saint-Barthélemy became an overseas collectivity on 22 February 2007. Furthermore, two regions without permanent habitation have no communes: TOM of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands Clipperton Island in the Pacific Ocean In metropolitan France, the average area of a commune in 2004 was 14.88 square kilometres. The median area of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was smaller, at 10.73 square kilometres. The median area is a better measure of the area of a typical French commune.
This median area is smaller than that of most European countries. In Italy, the median area of communes is 22 km2. Switzerland and the Länder of Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia in Germany were the only places in Europe where the communes had a smaller median area than in France; the communes of France's overseas départements such as Réunion and French Guiana are large by French standards. They group into the same commune several villages or towns with sizeable distances among them. In Réunion, demographic expansion and sprawling urbanization have resulted in the administrative splitting of some communes; the median population of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was 380 inhabitants. Again this is a small number, here France stands apart in Europe, with the lowest communes' median population of all the European countries; this small median population of French communes can be compared with Italy, where the median population of communes in 2001 was 2,343 inhabitants, Belgium, or Spain.
The median population given here should not hide the fact that there are pronounced differences in size between French communes. As mentioned in the introduction, a commune can be a city of 2 million inhabitants such as Paris, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, or just a hamlet of 10 inhabitants. What the median population tells us is that the vast majority of the French communes only have a few hundred inhabitants. In metropolitan France just over 50 percent of the 36,683 communes have fewer than 500 inhabitants a
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Weiden in der Oberpfalz, Bavaria, Germany, since 1954
Frameries, Belgium, since 1979
Macerata, Marche, Italy, since 1982
Hounslow, London, United Kingdom, since 1982
Dapaong, Togo, since 1989
Echmiadzin, Armenia, since 1989
Pozuelo de Alarcón, Community of Madrid, Spain, since 1990
Nahariya, Israel, since 1994
Chongwen District, Beijing, China, since 1998[needs update]
Guro, Seoul, South Korea, since 2005
Madison, New Jersey, United States
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