Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques in the context of "Saône-et-Loire"

In France, a prefecture (French: préfecture, pronounced [pʁefɛktyʁ] ) may be:

• the chef-lieu de département, the commune in which the administration of a department is located;
• the chef-lieu de région, the commune in which the administration of a region is located;
• the jurisdiction of a prefecture;
• the official residence or headquarters of a prefect.

Although the administration of departments and regions is distinct, a regional prefect is ex officio prefect of the department in which the regional prefecture is located. The officeholder has authority upon the other prefects in the region on a range of matters.

Bouches-du-Rhône (/ˌbuːʃ djuː ˈroʊn/ BOOSH dew ROHN; French: les Bouches-du-Rhône [le buʃ dy ʁon] , locally [le ˈbuʃə dy ˈʁɔnə]; Occitan: lei Bocas de Ròse [lej ˈbukɔz de ˈʀɔze]; "the Mouths of the Rhône") is a department in southern France. It borders Vaucluse to the north, Gard to the west and Var to the east. The Mediterranean Sea lies to the south. Its prefecture and largest city is Marseille; other important cities include Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Martigues and Aubagne.

Marseille, France's second-largest city, has one of the largest container ports in the country. It prides itself on being France's oldest city, founded by Greek settlers from Phocaea around 600 BC. Bouches-du-Rhône is the most populous department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, with 2,043,110 inhabitants as of 2019. It has an area of 5,087 km (1,964 sq mi). Its INSEE and postal code is 13.

An aire d'attraction d'une ville (or AAV, literally meaning "catchment area of a city") is a statistical area used by France's national statistics office INSEE since 2020, officially translated as functional area in English by INSEE, which consists of a densely populated urban agglomeration and the surrounding exurbs, towns and intervening rural areas that are socioeconomically tied to the central urban agglomeration, as measured by commuting patterns. INSEE's functional area (AAV) is therefore akin to what is most often called metropolitan area in English.

The demography of France is monitored by the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED) and the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE). As of 1 January 2025, 66,352,000 people lived in Metropolitan France, while 2,254,000 lived in overseas France, for a total of 68,606,000 inhabitants in the French Republic. In January 2022, the population of France officially reached the 68,000,000 mark. In the 2010s and until 2017, the population of France grew by 1 million people every three years - an average annual increase of 340,000 people, or +0.6%.

France was historically Europe's most populous country. During the Middle Ages, more than one-quarter of Europe's total population was French; by the seventeenth century, this had decreased slightly to one-fifth. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, other European countries, such as Germany and Russia, had caught up with France and overtaken it in number of people. The country's population sharply increased with the baby boom following World War II, as it did in other European countries.

Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (sometimes abbreviated as AHP; French pronunciation: [alp də ot pʁɔvɑ̃s] ; Occitan: Aups d'Auta Provença; lit. 'Alps of Upper Provence'), formerly until 1970 known as Basses-Alpes (French pronunciation: [basz‿alp], lit. 'Lower Alps'), is a department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of France, bordering Alpes-Maritimes and Italy to the east, Var to the south, Vaucluse to the west, Drôme and Hautes-Alpes to the north. Formerly part of the province of Provence, it had a population of 164,308 in 2019, which makes it the 8th least populated department and the 94th most populated French department.

Alpes-de-Haute-Provence's main cities are Digne-les-Bains (prefecture), Manosque, Sisteron, Barcelonnette, Castellane and Forcalquier. Inhabitants are called the Bas-Alpins (masculine) or Bas-Alpines (feminine) in reference to the department's former name, Basses-Alpes, which was in use until 1970. Although the prefecture is Digne-les-Bains, the largest city is Manosque. Alpes-de-Haute-Provence's INSEE and postal code is 04.

In France, an urban unit (French: unité urbaine) is a statistical area defined by INSEE, the French national statistics office, for the measurement of contiguously built-up areas. According to the INSEE definition , an "unité urbaine" is a commune alone or a grouping of communes which: a) form a single unbroken spread of urban development, with no distance between habitations greater than 200 m and b) have all together a population greater than 2,000 inhabitants. Communes not belonging to an unité urbaine are considered rural.

The French unité urbaine is a statistical area in accordance with United Nations recommendations for the measurement of contiguously built-up areas. Other comparable units in other countries are the United States "Urbanized Area" and the "urban area" definition shared by Canada and the United Kingdom. The French aire d'attraction d'une ville is equivalent to the functional urban area as defined by Eurostat, and represents a population and employment centre (urban cluster) and its commuting zone. The zoning into unités urbaines and aires d'attraction des villes was last revised in 2020.

Bas-Rhin (French pronunciation: [bɑ ʁɛ̃] ) is a department in Alsace which is a part of the Grand Est region of France. The name means 'Lower Rhine', referring to its lower altitude among the two French Rhine departments: it is downstream of the Haut-Rhin (Upper Rhine) department. Both belong to the European Upper Rhine region. It is, with the Haut-Rhin (Upper Rhine), one of the two departments of the traditional Alsace region which until 1871, also included the area now known as the Territoire de Belfort. The more populous and densely populated of the pair, it had 1,152,662 inhabitants in 2021. The prefecture is based in Strasbourg. The INSEE and Post Code is 67.

On 1 January 2021, the departemental councils of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin merged into the European Collectivity of Alsace.

Chartres (French pronunciation: [ʃaʁtʁ] ) is the prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France. It is located about 90 km (56 mi) southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 170,763 inhabitants in the metropolitan area of Chartres (as defined by the INSEE), 38,534 of whom lived in the city (commune) of Chartres proper.

Chartres is famous worldwide for the Chartres Cathedral. Mostly constructed between 1193 and 1250, this Gothic cathedral is in an exceptional state of preservation. The majority of the original stained glass windows are intact, while the architecture has seen only minor changes since the early 13th century. Part of the old town, including most of the library associated with the School of Chartres, was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1944.

Essonne (French pronunciation: [ɛsɔn] ) is a department in the southern suburb part of the Île-de-France region. It is named after the river Essonne. In 2019, it had a population of 1,301,659, across 194 communes.

Essonne was formed on 1 January 1968, when Seine-et-Oise was split into smaller departments. Its prefecture is Évry-Courcouronnes. Its INSEE and postcode number is 91.