Gems of the Seine & South of France

Visit Arles, one of the Mediterrean towns featured in Van Gogh’s paintings.

Located in Southeast France on the Rhone River. With a population near 90,000, it is a wine producing and manufacturing area. Famous Gothic church and many other historic sites are located in the city.

Located in the Dijon region, Chalon-Sur-Saone is at the junction of the Saone River and the Canal du Centre.

Originally named for its geographic position at the confluence of the Seine and Oise rivers. The village was given the addition “Sainte Honorine” in the 13th century after the female Saint Honorina, whose relics had been stored there since 876. Conflans-Sainte-Honorine is located in the north-western suburbs of Paris.

As the French capital, Paris is the commercial, financial, and industrial focus of France, a major transportation hub, and a cultural and intellectual center of international renown. A beautiful city in which tourism is the main industry, Paris is cut by the Seine River. On its stately, formal right (northern) bank are many of the most fashionable streets and shops, and such landmarks as the Arc de Triomphe, Place de la Concorde, Louvre, and Sacré Coeur.

The left bank houses governmental offices and is the site of much of the city’s intellectual life. It is known for its old Latin Quarter and for such landmarks as the Sorbonne, the Luxembourg Palace, the Panthéon, and the modern Pompidou Center (see Beaubourg). The historic core of Paris is the Île de la Cité, a small island occupied in part by the Palais de Justice and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Above the city rises the Eiffel Tower. Paris is divided into 20 arrondissements (boroughs) and governed by a mayor.

A fishing village when it was conquered (52 B.C.) by Caesar, it became an important Roman town. It was a Merovingian capital in the 5th cent. and became the national capital with the accession (987) of Hugh Capet, count of Paris. It flowered as the center of medieval commerce and scholasticism but suffered severely during the Hundred Years War. Paris consistently displayed a rebellious and independent spirit, as in its resistance to Henry IV (1589-93); the first Fronde (1648-49); the revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848; and the Commune of Paris (1871). During World War II it was occupied (1940-44) by the Germans but was relatively undamaged.