Ile-de-France

Region of northern France; area 12,012 sq km/4,638 sq mi; population (1999 est) 10,952,000. It includes the French capital, Paris, and the towns of Versailles, Sèvres, and St-Cloud, and comprises the départements of Essonne, Val-de-Marne, Val-d'Oise, Ville de Paris, Seine-et-Marne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-St-Denis, and Yvelines; the region contains about 20% of the population of France. From here the early French kings extended their authority over the whole country. It has thus become the core of the French state and comprises its geopolitical heartland.

It is a district of forests and plains, fertile and prosperous with market gardens and orchards. The former province of Ile-de-France formed a kind of landlocked ‘island’ with Paris as its capital. In the middle of the 9th century it was made a dukedom, and its second duke, Odo of the Carolingian dynasty, became king of France in 888, and was the ancestor of Hugh Capet.

With the post-revolution reorganization of territory it was divided into the former département of the Seine with the greater part of the Seine-et-Marne, Oise, Aisne, the former département of Seine-et-Oise, and a small part of Loiret and Nièvre.