MAP: longest beach, most bakeries

France is the country that attracts the most international visitors each year, with more than 90 million tourists flocking each year to see its tourist sites, according to pre-Covid figures.

It can also claim more unusual records – it has the most private swimming pools of any European country and the second in the world after the United States.

But perhaps more interesting are the records in France.

In our map below, we look at different records attributed to cities, departments or regions of metropolitan France.

Which city has the most bike paths or bakeries? Which region has the most bars per person?

Which city has the most singles? And where is the longest beach?

Check it out on our map and below read some of the recordings in more detail.

The records are all based on the most recent information available, but are subject to change over time and new data is released.

The singles village of France

Rochefourchat in the Drôme department is not a bustling place. In fact, chances are that if you go there, you won’t meet a single other person.

This is because the hamlet has only one registered resident and that person does not live there year-round.

In the hamlet is a detached house located next to the Saint-Pierre church. There is also a public phone box and a sign describing local hiking trails.

An article on Rochefourchat on a local Drôme tourist blog indicates that it is possible to organize a wedding in the least populated village in France.

He specifies that the town “hides many romantic places”.

Screenshot / Google Maps

Caption: A house and a church in Rochefourchat

The department obsessed with dating apps

A study by a French dating federation – Fédération Française de Rencontres – found that the Brittany department of Finistère has the highest proportion of active users of the dating app Tinder.

It says 4.33% of its residents are Tinder users, more than any other county.

In second place are the Hautes-Pyrénées (Occitanie), with 3.98% of its inhabitants on the application, followed by Haute-Vienne (Nouvelle-Aquitaine), with 3.94%.

The dirtiest city?

This might be unfair on Marseille, which is a beautiful historic port city on the Mediterranean Sea.

A 2018 contest organized by the program Radio Brunet on RMC asked its listeners to vote for the dirtiest city in France.

Marseille was chosen, and he was rewarded with the Balai d’Or (Golden Broom) – this is a joke in reference to the Ballon d’Or (Golden Ball), an award given to the best footballer in the world.

The Paris suburb of Montreuil was voted the second dirtiest city, while Paris itself came in third.

The voting was based on people’s experiences and subjective opinion and is not necessarily factually correct.

Most bars

The French region of Brittany is known to be a place where alcohol is often enjoyed and is part of people’s daily culture.

But a study by the French newspaper Le Télégramme in the mid-2010s found that the island of Corsica actually has more bars per person than Brittany.

Using data from Insee, the French national statistics institute, it has been established that there are 1.83 bars per 1,000 inhabitants. In Brittany, there are approximately 0.99 bars per 1,000 inhabitants.

The map above is part of our ongoing series showcasing different elements of French society and culture through maps.

We have also written about French inventors, cheeses, funny town names, local sweets and desserts, local appetizers and many other topics.

If you have any suggestions for maps you’d like us to make or think we should add something to our previous articles, let us know at [email protected].

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