Our Guide to the Departments of Metropolitan France
Originally posted on & updated on 18th April, 2025
France is a vast country which is divided into thirteen regions – these are then sub-divided into administrative departments or locally known “départements”. Overall, there are 96 administrative départements situated in mainland France which are numbered 1 to 95, plus five overseas départements – there is, however, no number 20! These allocated numbers are used as the “Official Geographical Code” much like the postcode system in the UK to cover the 35,000 or so towns of the country.
Each department is allocated a capital city or prefecture department which is usually the largest city within the department. Each département is governed by an elected general council, which holds responsibility for local services, laws, and budget; an officer called a commissioner represents the national government and is the council’s executive agent.
Born from the Revolution
The departments were created in 1790 after the Revolution in an attempt to unify the country. They replaced the Ancien Régime provinces which had been the political and social system of the Kingdom of France since the Late Middle Ages. New departments are created when existing departments became overly populated and harder to govern.
Each department is named after the geographic features of the area and each has a coat of arms commonly associated with their department. The department of Côte-d’Or is the only department not named after some form of geography – it literally translates as “golden slope” and was termed by a local MP in 1789 who wanted to honour the golden leaves on the sloping vineyards.
The Most Popular Departments
Here is a list of the most popular departments of France, we can see them all by visiting the appropriate regional page, which has a list of all the departments for that specific region. They are in numerical order.
(06) Alpes-Maritimes
, (09) Ariège
, (11) Aude,
(12) Aveyron,
(14) Calvados,
(16) Charente,
(21) Côte-d’Or
, (22) Côtes-d’Armor,
(24) Dordogne,
(26) Drôme,
(29) Finistère
, (30) Gard
, (31) Haute-Garonne, (32) Gers,
(33) Gironde,
(34) Hérault
, (36) Indre,
(37) Indre-et-Loire
, (50) Manche,
(53) Mayenne
, (58) Nièvre
, (61) Orne, (66) Pyrénées-Orientales,
(69) Rhône
, (71) Saône-et-Loire
, (72) Sarthe
, (73) Savoie
, (74) Haute-Savoie
, (75) Paris
, (79) Deux-Sèvres,
(81) Tarn
, (82) Tarn-et-Garonne
, ( 83) Var
, (84) Vaucluse,
(85) Vendée,
(86) Vienne and
(89) Yonne
.
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