Bouches-du-Rhône
French department in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Bouches-du-Rhône ( 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 and the third most populous of France, with 2,087,658 inhabitants as of 2023. It has an area of 5,087 km2 (1,964 sq mi). Its INSEE and postal code is 13.
History
The history of the area is closely linked to that of Provence. Marseille has been an important harbour since before Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul.
The public source identifies “Bouches-du-Rhône” as french department in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bouches-du-Rhône, French and department.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3240. The first chronological checks are 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bouches-du-Rhône” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.