↑ Back to the map

French Regional Capitals Quiz

Sixteen French regional capitals, overseas ones included, on a flat map of France: read the city and click its region.

Prefectures first: how a French region gets its capital

A French regional capital is the town where the prefect sits, and the deck follows the prefectures. That matters after the 2016 merger, because two regions split the honours: Rouen is the prefecture of Normandy while the elected regional council meets in Caen, and Dijon is the prefecture of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté while its council meets in Besançon. Occitanie keeps its regional headquarters in Toulouse but holds its plenary sessions in Montpellier. Size did not decide much either. Le Havre has more people than Rouen or Caen, and Tours has more than Orléans, the capital of Centre-Val de Loire. Where the capital is also the biggest city, as with Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes, the card is easy.

Rennes rather than Nantes, and the other traps on the mainland

Nantes was the seat of the dukes of Brittany and still has their castle, but it is the capital of Pays de la Loire; Brittany is governed from Rennes, where the Parliament of Brittany sat under the old monarchy. Ajaccio, Napoleon's birthplace, is the capital of Corsica. Orléans, Joan of Arc's city, governs Centre-Val de Loire rather than Tours, further down the Loire. Dijon, once the seat of the dukes of Burgundy, is the card for Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, and Lyon for Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, though Clermont-Ferrand was the capital of the old Auvergne region until the merger.

Across the sea: Basse-Terre, Fort-de-France and Mamoudzou

The overseas cards need a moment's thought. Guadeloupe's prefecture is Basse-Terre, a small town at the foot of the Soufrière volcano on the western island, while the commercial centre and the airport are at Pointe-à-Pitre on Grande-Terre. Fort-de-France is the capital of Martinique; Saint-Pierre, the island's leading town until 1902, was destroyed that year by the eruption of Mount Pelée, which killed almost everyone in it. Cayenne is the capital of French Guiana, with the space centre further up the coast at Kourou. Saint-Denis on Réunion is the largest of the overseas capitals, more populous than Rouen, Orléans or Ajaccio. Mamoudzou, on the main island of Mayotte, has been the prefecture since 1977, when it took over from Dzaoudzi on the smaller island of Petite-Terre. Strasbourg and Lille, the capitals of Grand Est and Hauts-de-France, stay locked, as their regions do on the flag map.

All 16 capitals and their regions

16 capitals are in the deck, listed in alphabetical order by city, each with its region. Grand Est and Hauts-de-France are on the map but not in the deck.

1. AjaccioCorsica
2. Basse-TerreGuadeloupe
3. BordeauxNouvelle-Aquitaine
4. CayenneFrench Guiana
5. DijonBourgogne-Franche-Comté
6. Fort-de-FranceMartinique
7. LyonAuvergne-Rhône-Alpes
8. MamoudzouMayotte
9. MarseilleProvence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
10. NantesPays de la Loire
11. OrléansCentre-Val de Loire
12. ParisÎle-de-France
13. RennesBrittany
14. RouenNormandy
15. Saint-DenisRéunion
16. ToulouseOccitanie

Questions about the capitals

Why is Rennes the capital of Brittany rather than Nantes?

When the modern regions were drawn in the mid-twentieth century, the Loire-Atlantique department, and with it Nantes, was placed in Pays de la Loire rather than Brittany, and the question has been argued about ever since. Rennes had housed the Parliament of Brittany from the sixteenth century, so it took the regional prefecture and, later, the regional council.

Which French regional capitals are not the largest city in their region?

Three. In Normandy Le Havre has more people than Rouen; in Centre-Val de Loire Tours has more than Orléans; and in Guadeloupe both Les Abymes and Pointe-à-Pitre, on Grande-Terre, outnumber Basse-Terre on the other island. Everywhere else, from Paris and Lyon down to Ajaccio and Mamoudzou, the prefecture is also the most populous commune of its region.

Which overseas capital is the biggest, and which the smallest?

Saint-Denis on Réunion, with about 150,000 people, is the biggest: more than any other commune outside metropolitan France, and more than Rouen or Orléans. Fort-de-France comes next, then Mamoudzou and Cayenne. The smallest is Basse-Terre, the seat of Guadeloupe's prefecture, a town of about ten thousand at the foot of the Soufrière volcano.

More maps

Flags of the same map: French regions. Other maps: US state capitals, European capitals, Asian capitals, Capitals of the Americas, African capitals, Spanish regional capitals, Italian regional capitals, Brazilian state capitals, German state capitals, Canadian provincial capitals. All 235 flags of the world with their capitals: Flags of the world · all modes.