Provinces of France

The Kingdom of France was organized into provinces until March 4, 1790, when the establishment of the département system superseded provinces. The provinces of France were roughly equivalent to the historic counties of England. They came into their final form over the course of many hundreds of years, as many dozens of semi-independent fiefs and former independent countries came to be incorporated into the French royal domain. Because of the haphazard manner in which the provinces evolved, each had its own sets of feudal traditions, laws, taxation systems, courts, etc., and the system represented an impediment to effective administration of the entire country from Paris. During the early years of the French Revolution, in an attempt to centralize the administration of the whole country, and to remove the influence of the French nobility over the country, the entirety of the Province system was abolished and replaced by the system of départements, which is still in use today.

In some cases, several modern regions or départements share names with the historic provinces, and their borders may cover roughly the same territory.

List of former provinces of France [edit]

The list below shows the major provinces of France at the time of their dissolution during the French Revolution. Capital cities are shown in parentheses. Bold cities indicate that the city was the seat of a parlement or conseils souverains (sovereign councils), which were legislative and judicial bodies. In some cases, the legislature met in a different city than the traditional capital. Some of the provinces that were later incorporated into France during the revolution were not formally part of the Kingdom of France.

Provinces of France relative to the modern borders of France. Some of these provinces were not part of the Kingdom of France, and especially around the borders may have had a different extent than this map shows.

Île-de-France (Paris)
Berry (Bourges)
Orléanais (Orléans)
Normandy (Rouen)
Languedoc (Toulouse)
Lyonnais (Lyon)
Dauphiné (Grenoble)
Champagne (Troyes)
Aunis (La Rochelle)
Saintonge (Saintes)
Poitou (Poitiers)
Guyenne and Gascony (Bordeaux)
Burgundy (Dijon)
Picardy (Amiens)
Anjou (Angers)
Provence (Aix-en-Provence)
Angoumois (Angoulême)
Bourbonnais (Moulins)
Marche (Guéret)
Brittany (Rennes)
Maine (Le Mans)
Touraine (Tours)
Limousin (Limoges)
Foix (Foix)
Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand)
Béarn (Pau)
Alsace (Strasbourg, cons. souv. in Colmar)
Artois (Arras)
Roussillon (Perpignan)
Flanders and Hainaut (Lille parlement in Douai)
Franche-Comté (Besançon)
Lorraine (Nancy)
Corsica (off map, Ajaccio, cons. souv. in Bastia)
Nivernais (Nevers)
Comtat Venaissin, a Papal fief (Avignon)
Imperial Free City of Mulhouse
Savoy, a Sardinian fief
Nice (Nice), a Sardinian fief
Montbéliard (Montbéliard), a fief of Württemberg
Trois-Évêchés (not pictured) (Metz, Toul and Verdun).

Coat of Arms of the Provinces, Régions, Départements and Cities of France. [edit]

This Gallery of French coats of arms shows the coats of arms of the Provinces, Régions, and Départements of France, and of certain French cities. They are used to visually identify historical and present-day regions, as well as cities, within France.