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The départements (or departments) are administrative units of France, roughly analogous to British counties and are now grouped into 22 metropolitan and four overseas régions. They are subdivided into 342 arrondissements. Départements are also found in Côte d'Ivoire.

1 Administrative role

Each département is administered by a Conseil Général elected for six years, and its executive is, since 1982 headed by the president of that council (formerly it was headed by the préfet).

The French national government is represented in the département by a préfet appointed by the national executive. The préfet is assisted by one or more sous-préfets based in district centres outside the departmental capital.

The capital city of a département bears the title of préfecture. Départements are divided into one to seven arrondissements. The capital city of an arrondissement is called the sous-préfecture. The civil servant in charge is the sous-préfet.

The départements sub-divide into communes, governed by municipal councils. France (as of 1999) had 36,779 communes.

Most of the départements have an area of around 4,000-8,000 km² and a population between 250,000 and a million. The largest in terms of area is Gironde (10,000 km²) and the smallest the city of ParisEiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. Paris is the capital and largest city of France. The city is built on an arc of the River Seine, and is thus divided into two parts: the Right Bank to the north and the smaller Left Bank to (105 km² excluding the suburbs, now organised in adjacent départements). The most populous is NordNord Details Information Number59 Region Nord-Pas-de-Calais Prefecture Lille Subprefectures Avesnes-sur-Helpe Cambrai Douai Dunkerque Valenciennes Population Total ( 1999) Density Ranked 1st 2,555,020 445 /km² Area 5,743 km² Arrondissements 6 Cantons 79 C (2,550,000) and the least populous LozèreLozere Details Information Number48 Region Languedoc-Roussillon Prefecture Mende Subprefecture Florac Population Total ( 1999) Density Ranked 100th 73,509 14 /km² Area5,167 km² Arrondissements 2 Cantons 25 Communes 185 President of the general councilXX L (74,000).

See also: List of French départements by populationRank Departement Population (1999) Size (km²) Density (pop. km²) 1 Nord 2 555 020 5 743 445 2 Paris 2 125 246 105 20 164 3 Bouches-du-Rhone 1 835 719 5 087 361 4 Rhone 1 578 869 3 249 486 5 Pas-de-Calais 1 441 568 6 671 216 6 Hauts-de-Seine 1 428 881 176

The départements are numbered: their two-digit numbers appear in postal codes and on car number-plates. Note that there is no number 20, but 2A and 2B instead. Note also that the two-digit code "98" is used by MonacoThe Principality of Monaco known as Munegu in the local dialect, is a city state and the second-smallest country in the world, wedged in between the Mediterranean Sea and France along the French Riviera or Cote d'Azur (The Blue Coast). Consisting mostly o. Together with the ISO 3166-1ISO 3166-1 as part of the ISO 3166 standard provides codes for the names of countries and dependent areas. It was first published in 1974 by the International Organization for Standardization and defines three different codes for each area: ISO 3166-1 alp country code FR the numbers form the ISO 3166-2ISO 3166-2 is the second part of the ISO 3166 standard. It is a geocode system created for coding the names of subdivisions of countries ( subnational entities) and dependent areas. The purpose of the standard is to establish a worldwide series of short a country subdivision codes for the metropolitan departments. The overseas departments get two letters for the ISO 3166-2 code.