Departments of France
administrative subdivision in France
In the administrative divisions of France, the department (French: département, pronounced [depaʁtəmɑ̃] ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level ("territorial collectivities"), between the administrative regions and the communes. There are a total of 101 departments, consisting of ninety-six departments in metropolitan France, and five overseas departments (which are also classified as overseas regions). Departments are further subdivided into 333 arrondissements and 2,054 cantons (as of 2023). These last two levels of government have no political autonomy, instead serving as the administrative basis for the local organisation of police, fire departments, and, in certain cases, elections.
Each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council (sing. conseil départemental, pl. conseils départementaux). From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils (sing. conseil général, pl. conseils généraux).
“Departments of France” enters the record as administrative subdivision in France. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Departments, France and administrative can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6465. The Library of Congress control number is sh98007394. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2023, 1800 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Departments of France” 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.