Departments of France
In the administrative divisions of France, the department is one of the three levels of government below the national level, between the administrative regions and the commune. Ninety-six departments are in metropolitan France, five are overseas departments, which are classified as regions. Departments are further subdivided into 334 arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons; each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council. From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils; each council has a president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school buildings and technical staff, local roads and school and rural buses, a contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents the government; the departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity.
All of them were named after physical geographical features, rather than after historical or cultural territories which could have their own loyalties. The division of France into departments was a project identified with the French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès, although it had been discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers; the earliest known suggestion of it is from 1764 in the writings of d'Argenson. They have inspired similar divisions in some of them former French colonies. Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the "Official Geographical Code", allocated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. Overseas departments have a three-digit number; the number is used, for example, in the postal code, was until used for all vehicle registration plates. While residents use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, more distant departments are referred to by their names, as few people know the numbers of all the departments.
For example, inhabitants of Loiret might refer to their department as "the 45". In 2014, President François Hollande proposed to abolish departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, to transfer their powers to other levels of governance; this reform project has since been abandoned. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution, France gained territory through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the close of the Ancien Régime, it was organised into provinces. During the period of the Revolution, these were dissolved in order to weaken old loyalties; the modern departments, as all-purpose units of the government, were created on 4 March 1790 by the National Constituent Assembly to replace the provinces with what the Assembly deemed a more rational structure.
Their boundaries served two purposes: Boundaries were chosen to break up France's historical regions in an attempt to erase cultural differences and build a more homogeneous nation. Boundaries were set so that every settlement in the country was within a day's ride of the capital of a department; this was a security measure, intended to keep the entire national territory under close control. This measure was directly inspired by the Great Terror, during which the government had lost control of many rural areas far from any centre of government; the old nomenclature was avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after other physical features. Paris was in the department of Seine. Savoy became the department of Mont-Blanc; the number of departments 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with the territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire. Following Napoleon's defeats in 1814–1815, the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86.
In 1860, France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy, which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from the new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department; the 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe, Moselle and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. A small part of Haut-Rhin became known as the Territoire de Belfort; when France regained the ceded departments after World War I, the Territoire de Belfort was not re-integrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922, it became France's 90th department; the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, a new Moselle department was created in the regaine
Cherbourg-Octeville
Cherbourg-Octeville is a city and former commune situated at the northern end of the Cotentin peninsula in the northwestern French department of Manche. It is a subprefecture of its department, was formed when the commune of Cherbourg absorbed Octeville on 28 February 2000. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin; the city is a Maritime sub-prefecture of la Manche. Due to its union, it is the most populated city in its department with 37,121 inhabitants making it the first city of the department before the Saint-Lô prefecture and the second in the region after Caen. Cherbourg-en-Cotentin is protected by Cherbourg Harbour, between La Hague and Val de Saire, the city has been a strategic position over the centuries, disputed between the English and French. Cited as one of the "keys to the kingdom" by Vauban, it became, by colossal maritime development work, a first-rate military port under the leadership of Louis XVI and Napoleon, holds an arsenal of the French Navy.
A stopping point for prestigious transatlantic liners in the first half of the 20th century, Cherbourg was the primary goal of US troops during the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Along with its use as a military and yachting port, it is a cross-Channel ferry port, with routes to the English ports of Poole and Portsmouth, the Irish port of Rosslare Harbour and St Helier on Jersey. Limited by its geographical isolation from being a great commercial port, it is nonetheless an important shipbuilding centre, a working-class city with a rural hinterland. On Wednesday, 10 April 1912 the RMS Titanic crossed the English Channel and docked here at 7:00pm local time before raising anchor at 9:10pm local time and sailing to her final stop Queenstown, Ireland. Cherbourg-en-Cotentin is located at the northern tip of the Cotentin Peninsula, in the department of Manche, of which it is a subprefecture. At the time of the 1999 census the city of Cherbourg had an area of 6.91 square kilometres, while the city of Octeville had an area of 7.35 km2.
The largest city in the Department of Manche, it is the result of the merger of the communes of Cherbourg and Octeville. The amalgamated city today has an area of 14.26 km2. Cherbourg is situated at the mouth of the Divette and at the south of the bay between Cap Lévi to the east and Cap de La Hague to the west, Cherbourg-Octeville is 120 km from the English coast. Cherbourg and Octeville-sur-Cherbourg once belonged to the deanery of La Hague, delimited by the Divette. In 1786, a part of Equeurdreville joined Cherbourg, during the construction of the port, in 1802, a portion of Octeville. Since 1811, the "mielles" of Tourlaville, commune of the deanery of Saire, are integrated into the Cherbourg territory known as the quarter of Val-de-Saire where the Pasteur Hospital and the Saint-Clement Church were built. Thus, Cherbourg-Octeville lies both in the Val de Saire. Like all Chantereyne and the area of the Mielles, the Cherbourg territory was reclaimed from the sea. Built at the level of the sea, the town developed at the foot of the Roule mountain and la Fauconnière.
Octeville is a former rural municipality, composed of hamlets, whose settlement extended from the 19th century and whose territory is urbanised since 1950 around the ZUP of the Provinces and the University campus. The bordering communes are Tourlaville to the east, Équeurdreville-Hainneville to the west, La Glacerie to the south and southeast, Martinvast to the south, Nouainville and Sideville to the south-west. Located at the end of the Armorican Massif, Cherbourg-en-Cotentin retains traces of the geologic formation, deformed granites and metamorphic schists of the Precambrian of Hercynian orogeny by the folding of the arkoses of the Cambrian and Armorican sandstone and shale of the Ordovician; these folds result in layers of sandstone tilted 45° towards the north-east on la Fauconniere and the Montagne du Roule. These two cliffs are due to sea erosion in the Quaternary; the retreat of the sea gave way to sand dunes and tidal marshes, destroyed by the urbanisation of the 17th and 19th centuries, identical to those of Collignon in Tourlaville.
These rocks in the soil have been used for centuries in several ways: Crushed granite extracted in Querqueville and arkoses of Becquet, have been used for the manufacture of rubble and blocks squared for lintels. The greenschist, whose colour comes from chlorite and sericite, are used for roofing in Nord-Cotentin, but masonry in Cherbourg; the Armorican sandstone of the Montagne du Roule is used for rockfill. Most of the many quarries, which opened in the metropolitan area for building the harbour wall, are now closed. Cherbourg-en-Cotentin is bordered by the sea; the construction of the port of trade, from 1769, accompanied by the diversion of the Divette and the Trottebec gathered in the canal de retenue, along the Avenue de Paris and Rue du Val-de-Saire. The streams of the Bucaille and the Fay, which watered the Croûte du Homet, disappeared in the 18th century during the construction of the military port. Cherbourg-en-Cotentin has a temperate oceanic climate, its maritime character causes high humidity and a strong sea wind stormy but low seasonal variations of temperature and few days of frost.
The combined effect of the wind and the tides can generate a rapid change of weather in a single day, with sun and rain which can be a few hours apart. The influence of the Gulf Stream
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery; the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, collapse of centralized authority and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages; the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete.
The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became admired in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded; the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty established the Carolingian Empire during the 8th and early 9th century. It covered much of Western Europe but succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, Saracens from the south. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages.
The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, by the founding of universities; the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine and war, which diminished the population of Europe. Controversy and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history: classical civilisation, or Antiquity. The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, media saecula, or "middle ages", first recorded in 1625; the alternative term "medieval" derives from medium aevum. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the "Six Ages" or the "Four Empires", considered their time to be the last before the end of the world; when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being "modern". In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua and to the Christian period as nova. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People, with a middle period "between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries".
Tripartite periodisation became standard after the 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient and modern. The most given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500, with the date of 476 first used by Bruni. Starting dates are sometimes used in the outer parts of Europe. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used. English historians use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period. For Spain, dates used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516, the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492. Historians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and late
Calvados (department)
Calvados is a department in the Normandy region in northwestern France. It takes its name from a cluster of rocks off the English Channel coast. Calvados is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790, it was created from a part of the former province of Normandy. The name "Orne inférieure" was proposed for the department, but it was decided to call the area Calvados after a group of rocks off its coast. One popular legend ascribes its etymology to the Salvador, a ship from the Spanish Armada that sank by the rocks near Arromanches-les-bains in 1588, it is more however, that the name Calvados was derived from calva dorsa, meaning bare backs, in reference to two sparsely vegetated rocks off its shore. After the allied victory at Waterloo the department was occupied by Prussian troops between June 1815 and November 1818. On 6 June 1944, the Allied forces landed on the beaches of the Bay of the Seine in what became known as the Battle of Normandy. Calvados belongs to the region of Normandy and is surrounded by the departments of Seine-Maritime, Eure and Manche.
To the north is the Baie de la Seine, part of the English Channel. On the east, the Seine River forms the boundary with Seine-Maritime. Calvados includes the Bessin area, the Pays d'Auge and the area known as the "Suisse normande"; the most notable places in Calvados include Deauville and the elegant 19th-century casino resorts of the coast. Agriculture dominates the economy of Calvados; the area is known for producing butter, cheese and Calvados, the apple spirit that takes its name from the area. The President of the General Council is the centrist Jean-Léonce Dupont, the former dominant figure of the right and centre in the department; the Conseil General of Calvados and Devon County Council signed a Twinning Charter in 1971 to develop links with the English county of Devon. The inhabitants of Calvados are called "Calvadosiens" and "Calvadosiennes". In 1999, Calvados had 648,299 inhabitants. Age distribution in Calvados: 75 years and older: 7.2% 60–74 years old: 13.16% 40–59 years old: 25.52% 20–39 years old: 28.53% 0–19 years old: 25.6% The Bayeux Tapestry is on display in Bayeux and makes the city one of the most-visited tourist destinations in Normandy.
Juno Beach Centre at Courseulles-sur-Mer, commemorates the D-Day landing of the Canadian liberation forces at Juno Beach during World War II in 1944. The cult of Saint Thérèse de Lisieux brings large numbers of people on pilgrimage to Lisieux, where she lived in a Carmelite convent; every September, Deauville hosts the Festival of the American Movie and the beach resort of Cabourg hosts the Festival of the Romantic Movie. Annually, the city of Caen celebrates the festival of the electronical cultures called "Nordik Impakt" & The festival of Beauregard, just around Caen; the local dialect of the Norman language is known as Augeron. It is spoken by a minority of the population. Calvados is one of the most visited areas in France because of its seaside resorts which are among the most prestigious in France with their luxurious hotels, green countryside, castles, the quiet, the chalk cliffs, the typical Norman houses, the history of William the Conqueror, Bayeux, the famous D-day beaches and numerous museums about the Second World War.
The culinary specialties from the verdant countryside of Calvados are abundant: cider, calvados and Pont-l'Évêque cheeses. One of the advantage of Calvados is to be near large urban centers. Calvados is therefore preferred for holidays and for weekends and sometimes considered as the countryside of Paris. Calvados, via the port of Ouistreham, is an entrance to the continent from Britain. There are two airports: Deauville-Saint Gatien; the department of Calvados has several popular tourist areas: the Bessin, the Plain of Caen, the Bocage Virois, the Côte de Nacre, the Côte Fleurie and the Pays d'Auge. Several beaches of Calvados are popular for water sports, including Cabourg and Merville-Franceville-Plage. Tourist capacity: 7,818 hotel rooms 13,734 camping sites 1,176 beds 619 rural gites This ranking takes into account all the municipalities having over 10% of second homes in the departement of Calvados. 80% of owners are from the Paris area, 10% are English and 10% are local. According to the general census of the population of 1 January 2006, 18.9% of housing available in the department were second homes.
Aquatic sports are played on the coasts and beaches, for example, kite surfing and beach volleyball. Stade Malherbe Caen is a professional football team from Caen, who play in Ligue 1. Arrondissements of the Calvados department Cantons of the Calvados department Communes of the Calvados department Calvados Stratégie – Calvados Development Agency Economic news from Calvados General Council website Prefecture website Calvados at Curlie Encyclopædia Britannica's guide to D-Day
Thérèse of Lisieux
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, born Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin known as Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, O. C. D. was a French Catholic Discalced Carmelite nun, venerated in modern times. She is popularly known as "The Little Flower of Jesus", or "The Little Flower". Thérèse has been a influential model of sanctity for Catholics and for others because of the simplicity and practicality of her approach to the spiritual life. Together with Saint Francis of Assisi, she is one of the most popular saints in the history of the church. Pope Saint Pius X called her "the greatest saint of modern times". Thérèse felt an early call to religious life, overcoming various obstacles, in 1888 at the early age of 15, she became a nun and joined two of her elder sisters in the cloistered Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy. After nine years as a Carmelite religious, having fulfilled various offices such as sacristan and assistant to the novice mistress, having spent her last eighteen months in Carmel in a night of faith, Thérèse died aged 24, following a slow and painful fight against tuberculosis.
Her feast day is 1 October in the General Roman Calendar, 3 October in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite. Thérèse is well-known throughout the world, with the Basilica of Lisieux being the second-largest place of pilgrimage in France after Lourdes, she was born in Rue Saint-Blaise, Alençon, in France on 2 January 1873, the daughter of Marie-Azélie Guérin, Louis Martin, a jeweler and watchmaker. Both her parents were devout Catholics who would become the first married couple canonized together by the Roman Catholic Church. Master Louis had tried to become a canon regular, wanting to enter the Great St Bernard Hospice, but had been refused because he knew no Latin. Zélie, possessed of a strong, active temperament, wished to serve the sick, had considered entering consecrated life, but the prioress of the canonesses regular of the Hôtel-Dieu in Alençon had discouraged her enquiry outright. Disappointed, Zélie learned the trade of lacemaking, she excelled in it and set up her own business on Rue Saint-Blaise at age 22.
Louis and Zélie met in early 1858 and married on July 13 of that same year at the Basilica of Notre-Dame d'Alençon. At first they decided to live as brother and sister in a perpetual continence, but when a confessor discouraged them in this, they changed their lifestyle and had nine children. From 1867 -- 70 they lost five year old Hélène. All five of their surviving daughters became nuns: Marie, Pauline, Léonie, Céline, Thérèse"A dreamer and brooder, an idealist and romantic, gave touching and naïve pet names: Marie was his diamond, Pauline his noble pearl, Céline the bold one.. But Thérèse was his petite reine, little queen, to whom all treasures belonged". Zélie was so successful in manufacturing lace that by 1870 Louis had sold his watchmaking shop to a nephew and handled the traveling and bookkeeping end of his wife's lacemaking business. Soon after her birth in January 1873, the outlook for the survival of Thérèse Martin was grim; because of her frail condition, she was entrusted to a wet nurse, Rose Taillé, who had nursed two of the Martin children.
Rose had her own children and could not live with the Martins, so Thérèse was sent to live with her in the forests of the Bocage at Semallé. On Holy Thursday, 2 April 1874, when she was 15 months old, she returned to Alençon where her family surrounded her with affection. "I hear the baby calling me Mama! as she goes down the stairs. On every step, she calls out Mama! and if I don't respond every time, she remains there without going either forward or back." She was educated in a Catholic environment, including Mass attendance at 5:30 AM, the strict observance of fasts, prayer to the rhythm of the liturgical year. The Martins practiced charity, visiting the sick and elderly and welcoming the occasional vagabond to their table. If she wasn't the model little girl her sisters portrayed, Thérèse was sensitive to this education, she played at being a nun. Described as a happy child, she was emotional too, cried: "Céline is playing with the little one with some bricks... I have to correct poor baby.
She rolls in the floor in despair believing. Sometimes she is so overcome she chokes. She's a nervous child, but she is good intelligent, remembers everything." At 22, Thérèse a Carmelite, admitted: "I was far from being a perfect little girl". From 1865 Zelie had complained of breast pain and in December 1876 a doctor told her of the seriousness of the tumour. Feeling the approach of death Madame Martin had written to Pauline in spring 1877, "You and Marie will have no difficulties with her upbringing, her disposition is so good. She is a chosen spirit." In June 1877 she left for Lourdes hoping to be cured, but the miracle did not happen: "The Mother of God has not healed me bec
Paris
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, commerce, fashion and the arts; the City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €681 billion in 2016, accounting for 31 percent of the GDP of France, was the 5th largest region by GDP in the world. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, ahead of Zurich, Hong Kong and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong-Kong, in 2018; the city is a major rail and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly.
Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily, is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, the first located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris is known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre was the most visited art museum in the world in 2018, with 10.2 million visitors. The Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art, the Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe; the historical district along the Seine in the city centre is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site. Popular landmarks in the centre of the city include the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, both on the Île de la Cité. Paris received 23 million visitors in 2017, measured by hotel stays, with the largest numbers of foreign visitors coming from the United States, the UK, Germany and China.
It was ranked as the third most visited travel destination in the world in 2017, after Bangkok and London. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris; the 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. Paris will host the 2024 Summer Olympics; the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the 1960, 1984, 2016 UEFA European Championships were held in the city and, every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes there. The name "Paris" is derived from the Celtic Parisii tribe; the city's name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. Paris is referred to as the City of Light, both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment and more because Paris was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale on its boulevards and monuments.
Gas lights were installed on the Place du Carousel, Rue de Rivoli and Place Vendome in 1829. By 1857, the Grand boulevards were lit. By the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps. Since the late 19th century, Paris has been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in French as Parisiens, they are pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area 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' Left Bank; the Roman town was called Lutetia. It became a prosperous city with a forum, temples, an amphitheatre. By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would become Paris in French. 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.
Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. 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' strategic importance—with its bridges prevent
Transport express régional
Transport express régional is the brand name used by the SNCF, the French national railway company, to denote rail service run by the regional councils of France their organised transport authorities. The network serves twenty French regions; every day, over 800,000 passengers are carried on 5,700 TER-branded trains. TER is an integral part of SNCF Proximités, a branch of the SNCF dealing with urban and regional passenger rail, along with Transilien, Intercités, Chemins de fer de Corse and Effia. SNCF established the TER system in 1984 to provide a framework for the management of regional passenger services. Since the end of the 1990s, it has been coordinated with the regional councils, who sign an agreement with SNCF on the designated routes, the number of connections, the fares and the service levels. TER services are subsidised by French taxpayers. On average, 72% of the cost is borne by the State and the regional councils, with the travellers paying only about 28% of the cost; this cost tends to increase over time because the regional councils have expanded the number of services.
The low profitability of the TER system is due to the way that the services are used by the travelling public, with commuter traffic in the morning and evening but significant under-utilisation during the rest of the day. In addition, passenger numbers are not high. TER trains consist of single or multiple-unit diesel, electric or dual-mode rail cars, as well as some Corail carriages used on intercity routes. Seven régions have been experimenting with the transfer of administration of the regional rail network since 1997: Alsace, the Centre-Val de Loire, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Rhône-Alpes and the Pays-de-la-Loire, since January 1999, Limousin. In 1998, the traffic increased to an average of 4.9% in these seven régions compared with 3.2% in other regions. A few other regions are in turn signing on conventions intermédiaires in order to prepare for the increasing decentralization of the network: in particular, Haute-Normandie in September 1997, Midi-Pyrénées and Burgundy November 1997, Picardy in January 1998, Lorraine in February 1998.
31 March 1994: The publication of the report Régions, SNCF: vers un renouveau du service public by the Haenel commission. 4 February 1995: The law of management and development of territory organized the transfer of responsibility of collective transportation in the interest of administrative regions. 19 December 1996: Signing of the first convention with the region of Rhône-Alpes. Several figures released by the regions: These figures do not take into account infrastructure expenses; the SNCF have designated ten TER services as trains touristiques. They are: The Chemins de fer de Corse: trains operated from Bastia and L'Île-Rousse to Ajaccio The Train des Merveilles: trains operated in the hills of Nice between the metropolis and Tende The Train des Gorges de l'Allier: trains operated between Langeac and Langogne; the Ligne de Saint Gervais – Vallorcine The Ligne de Cerdagne/train jaune: trains operated from Villefranche-de-Conflent and Latour-de-Carol-Enveitg The Autorail Espérance: gastronimical train between Bergerac and Sarlat The Chemin de fer du Blanc-Argent: services between Valençay and Salbris The Train des Alpes: trains operated between Marseille and Briançon and between Gap and Grenoble The Ligne des Hirondelles: between Dole and Saint-Claude The Ligne de la Côte Bleue: suburban services operated from Marseille to Miramas or Avignon TGV via the Blue Coast creeks.
SNCF TER - official website
– since 1951;
– since 1996
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