Page 147 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Europe

FR ANCE AND THE L OW C OUNTRIES  145

FRANCE

The best advocates for visiting France are the French themselves, convinced as
they are that their way of life is best, and their country the most civilized on
earth. The food and wine are justly celebrated, while French literature, art,
cinema, and architecture can be both profound and provocative. France is a
country that stimulates the intellect and gratifies the senses.

France belongs to both northern and Champagne, and Cognac; today, these
southern Europe, encompassing regions have been overtaken by chemicals,
ranging from Brittany, with its Celtic industrial machinery, telecommunications
maritime heritage, and Germanic Alsace- equipment, and fighter aircraft. The French
Lorraine, to the Mediterranean sunbelt and remain firmly committed to their roots,
the peaks of the Alps and Pyrenees. The however, and often keep a place in the
capital, Paris, is the country’s linchpin, with country for vacations or their retirement.
its intellectual excitement, intense tempo
of life, and notoriously brusque citizens. History
Strangely, as life in France becomes more Though famous for the rootedness of its
city-based and industrialized, so the desire peasant population, France has also been
grows to safeguard the old, traditional a European melting pot, from the arrival of
ways and to value rural life. The idea of life the Celtic Gauls in the 1st millennium BC
in the country – douceur de vivre (the Good through to the Mediterranean immigrations
Life), long tables set in the sun for the wine of the 20th century. Roman conquest by
and anecdotes to flow – is as seductive as Julius Caesar had an enduring impact
ever for residents and visitors alike. but, from the 4th and 5th centuries AD,
Nevertheless, the rural way of life has been Germanic invaders destroyed much of the
changing. Whereas in 1945 one person in Roman legacy. The Franks provided political
three worked in farming, today it is only leadership in the following centuries, but
one in 20. France’s main exports used to when their line died out in the late 10th
be luxury goods, such as perfumes, century, France was politically fragmented.

Rouen, a city on the river Seine in Normandy
The iconic monastery of Mont St-Michel in Normandy, northwestern France

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