The French Republic or France (French: République française or France) is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in Western Europe, but which also includes territories located in other continents. France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine River to the Atlantic Ocean. Because of its shape, Metropolitan France is known by Frenchmen as "the Hexagon". It is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Andorra, and Spain. It is across the English Channel from the United Kingdom. Because of French Guiana, the French Republic also shares land borders overseas with Brazil, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles.

One of the many landscapes of France:
Cantal département, in the mountainous Massif Central.

France is a democracy organised as a unitary semi-presidential republic. It is a developed country with the fifth-largest economy in the world in 2004. Its main ideals are expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. France is one of the founding members of the European Union, and has the largest land area of all members. France is also a founding member of the United Nations. It is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council wielding veto power, and it is also one of only eight acknowledged nuclear powers.

View over the old city of Lyon

The name France comes from the Franks, the Germanic tribe that occupied the region after the fall of the Roman Empire, and, more precisely the region around Paris called Île-de-France which was the centre of the French royal dominion.