Villages and areas of France without a single inhabitant per square kilometer have been mapped, with the south-east and east of the country being among the most empty.
The map was compiled by Zeste de Savoir, a knowledge-sharing association, based on 2017 data from the national statistics office Insee/Filosofi.
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- There are six entirely unoccupied villages, all located in the Meuse department in northeastern France (Grand Est)
- A village has an inhabitant: Rochefourchat, Drôme
- A village has two inhabitants: La Bâtie-des-Fonds, Drôme
- A village has three: Leménil-Mitry in Meurthe-et-Moselle.
The mountain areas are, unsurprisingly, also among the emptiest places in the country. These include the Alps, Pyrenees, Massif Central, Vosges and Jura. The Landes forest and the forest areas of Corsica are also among the least populated areas.
The map also shows some coastal areas as uninhabited, but the results are less accurate in these spaces due to the irregular and complicated edge of the coastline.
In rare cases, certain French villages have been left empty in memory of the massacres and to commemorate the inhabitants who died there. The most famous example is that of Oradour-sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne) where a Nazi SS division entered the village, separated the men from the women and children, and shot or burned alive almost every inhabitants.
Read more: The last survivor of the Oradour massacre during the Second World War publishes a book
In total, in 2022, France has nearly 68 million inhabitants and a population density of around 119 inhabitants per square kilometer, with a large variation depending on the area.
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