Yonne
French department
Yonne (French: [jɔn], in Burgundian: Ghienne) is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in France. It is named after the river Yonne, which flows through it, in the country's north-central part. One of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté's eight constituent departments, it is located in its northwestern part, bordering Île-de-France. It was created in 1790 during the French Revolution. Its prefecture is Auxerre, with subprefectures in Avallon and Sens. Its INSEE and postcode number is 89.
Yonne is Bourgogne-Franche-Comté's fourth-most populous department, with a population of 332,267 (2023). Its largest city is its prefecture Auxerre, with a population of about 35,000 within city limits and 68,000 in the urban area.
History
The first evidence of occupation in this area is found in the Grottes d'Arcy-sur-Cure, where paintings have been found dating back 28,000 years. The Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers of that time also left behind numerous flint artefacts.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Yonne” as french department. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as french department. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
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 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12816. VIAF identifies the subject as 243480363. The Library of Congress control number is n81120450. Authority coordinates are 47.800, 3.567. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1790 and 2023.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yonne” 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.