France is the most visited country in the world. It has everything that you could ever want to see on your holidays: a great city like Paris, good beaches, more monuments than any other country, lovely nature, incredible mountain scenery. France officially the French Republic metropolitan territory is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various overseas islands and territories located in other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. Metropolitan France covers 547,030 square kilometres having the largest area among European Union members and slightly larger than Spain. But while France is undoubtedly a place to eat and drink to your heart's content, there's much more to this fascinating country than cutting-edge cuisine. The French Republic is a unitary semi-presidential republic with strong democratic traditions. France is a member of the United Nations and serves as one of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council with veto rights. It is also a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Indian Ocean Commission (COI). It hosts the headquarters of the OECD, UNESCO, Interpol, Alliance Base and the International Bureau for Weights and Measures.

 With 81.9 million foreign tourists in 2007, France is ranked as the first tourist destination in the world, ahead of Spain (58.5 million in 2006) and the United States (51.1 million in 2006. With an estimated population of 64.5 million people, France is the 19th most populous country in the world. France's largest cities are Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Nice, and Nantes. France is a secular country as freedom of religion is a constitutional right, although some religious organisations such as Scientology, Children of God, the Unification Church, and the Order of the Solar Temple are considered cults. France features cities of high cultural interest (Paris being the foremost), beaches and seaside resorts, ski resorts, and rural regions that many enjoy for their beauty and tranquillity (green tourism). Aside of casual tourism France attracts a lot of religious pilgrims to Lourdes, a town in the Hautes-Pyrénées département, that hosts a few million tourists a year.