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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.
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