#30DayMapChallenge. France like you’ve never seen it before in ten maps

For several years now, it has been the meeting place for lovers of all maps, plans and other representations of the world. on occasion #30DayMapChallenge, budding cartographers are having a great time on social media, especially on Twitter, posting a map every day in November featuring an original representation of a region, country or continent. Often based on scientific data, sometimes imagined from scratch, they offer an unexpected reading of the geography of France and the world. Paris under water, cities with the shortest and longest names… our selection of ten maps that show France in a different light.

Our closest neighbors

Metropolitan France has 2,913 kilometers of land borders with eight countries: Germany (448 km), Andorra (57 km), Belgium (620 km), Spain (623 km), Italy (515 km), Luxembourg (73 km), Monaco (73 km). 4 km) and Switzerland (573 km). Not to mention the maritime border with the United Kingdom. What is the nearest boundary to your municipality? Answer with this map made by graphic designer journalist Jules Grandin.

Paris under water

If rising waters threaten several hundred coastal cities in France, what if it happened in the capital? Julien Dupont Cobray, who describes himself on Twitter as an “imaginary cartographer,” has produced a (hopefully fictional) map of Paris almost completely covered in water. The Pere-Lachaise cemetery is thus transformed into Porte Lachaise, the hill of Montmartre becomes an island, while the Eiffel Tower rises from its 324 meter height in the middle of the Seine. The author even traces the hypothetical lines of riverboats connecting the remnants of the resulting landmass.

-ac, -ière, -euil… A journey through suffixes in France

Those who are interested in place names (study of place names) will undoubtedly have noticed. some suffixes of city names are specific to certain regions. Thus, towns ending in -ac (Figeac, Bergerac…) are particularly common in New Aquitaine and Occitania, while those ending in -ville (Deauville, Trouville,…) are found especially in Normandy. As evidenced by this map published by Olivier Marchon, author of several geography books, taken by him An incredible atlas of France (ed. Otherwise).

Y, Eu, … Cities with the shortest names

Y in Somme, Sy in Ardennes, Cuq in Tarn… Some city names can be summed up in one, two or three letters. Graphic designer Clara Dealberto had fun creating a map of France named after the smallest city by department. “I sorted the municipalities by department by the length of their name, sometimes it’s definitive (like Y in the Somme, a big winner), but sometimes there are ties. In this case, I took the first one in alphabetical order because it was necessary to make a choice“, he clarifies.

… and the longest

Conversely, this map shows which municipality has the longest name in each department. It is in the Rhine, in Alsace, that there are the most long names. With 45 letters and seven dashes, the French champion is Saint-Rémy-en-Bousemont-Saint-Genest-et-Isson, Marne. However, not enough to beat the European record of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (58 letters) in Wales.

The roundest cities

You hardly know Sulangis, Brion and Vregny. These municipalities are the roundest in France. To measure this parameter, the author defined a roundness unit using QGIS, an open access geographic information system.

Lighthouses of Brittany

Brittany has the highest concentration of lighthouses in the world. Virgin Island (82.50m) is the highest in Europe and the highest in the world built of freestone. Romain T., a freelance cartographer, presents here those in the dark on the Finisterre coast. Like a constellation of stars in the sky.

Metros in France

Six cities in France have a metro network: Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille, Rennes and Toulouse. Boris Meriksky, a geology teacher-researcher at the University of Rennes 2, compares the geographic footprints of these six networks at the same scale. The Paris metro, with its 16 lines, seems very difficult to decipher…

The reliefs of Martinique

In topographic maps, contour lines are lines that connect points of the same elevation. They thus represent the relief of the area. This Twitter user relied on data from the National Geographic Institute (IGN) to represent the terrain of Marin County, south of the island of Marinica.

Pain or chocolate or chocolate?

Finally, let’s add our two cents to this eternal debate: should we ask the bakery for “pain au chocolat” or “chocolate?” It all depends on the region, as this map by a linguist specializing in regional French, namely author Mathieu Avanzi, shows. As we say at home, the big book of French in our regions (edited by Armand Colin). If the word “chocolatine” is used more by speakers from the southwest, the rest of France is dominated by “pain au chocolat”. In Alsace and northern France, the terms “petit pain au chocolat” and “croissant au chocolat” are even used.