Ardennes is a department in the Grand-Est region of northeastern France named after the broader Ardennes, its prefecture is the town Charleville-Mézières. The department is landlocked by the neighbouring departments of Aisne to the west, Marne to the south, Meuse to the east and the Belgian province of Namur to the north. The district is crossed in its northern part by the winding Meuse valley where most people live and activities are focused. Charleville-Mézières and Sedan are the main urban centres. The Ardennes is composed of 452 communes which are grouped into 19 cantons and four arrondissements of varying sizes. The largest arrondissement of the department is that of Charleville-Mézières while the smallest is Sedan which is half the size. The two arrondissements that occupy the northern part of the Ardennes, however, have four-fifths of the departmental population.
The other two arrondissements, Rethel and Vouziers, occupy the southern part of the department with roughly comparable areas but are very sparsely populated. Before the Poincaré decree of 10 September 1926 which removed many sub-prefectures in France, the department had five arrondissements. In addition to the four mentioned above, the fifth was that of Rocroi – a small historic city in the north-west of the department close to Belgium – which has been since annexed in its entirety to the district of Charleville-Mézières. The former arrondissement of Rocroi then consisted of six cantons – including four on the border with Belgium – which were Givet, Fumay, Revin, Rocroi, Rumigny, and Signy-le-Petit. Home purchases by Belgians and Dutch people are common in the region because the prices are much lower than in their country of residence.
There are iconic landmarks that attract many visitors to the Ardennes each year;the Château de Sedan (the busiest paying attraction in the Ardennes with approx. 60,000 admissions/year), the fortified site of Charlemont at Givet, the fort at Les Ayvelles, and the fortress of Rocroi. There are also many fortified churches and medieval sites in the department. There is the Ardennes forest, the "Green Way" (a bicycle path connecting Montcy-Notre Dame near Charleville-Mézières to Givet along the Meuse valley) promoting weekend tourism and tourist routes (green tourism).
Cultural tourism is booming with many music festivals (Le Cabaret Vert, the Douzy'k festival, the Aymon Folk Festival) not to mention museums (such as the Museum of the Ardennes) and
castles and the growing interest in industrial heritage. Finally, the creation of the Natural Regional Park of Ardennes (Regional Natural Park of Ardennes) on 21 December 2011 should continue to increase this type of tourism.
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