Nouvelle-Aquitaine () or ; ; Poitevin-Saintongeais: Novéle-Aguiéne; ) is the largest administrative region in France by area, located in the west and southwest of Metropolitan France. It was created in 2014 from the merger of Aquitaine, Limousin, and Poitou-Charentes in a territorial reform. The region covers , representing more than of Metropolitan France, and had a population of 6,033,952 in 2020. The new region was formally established on 1 January 2016, following the regional elections in December 2015.
The region is larger in area than any other French region, including overseas regions such as French Guiana, and has a landmass that is slightly greater than Austria. Bordeaux is the prefecture and largest city; its metropolitan area has about 850,000 inhabitants. The region has 25 major urban areas, among which the most important after Bordeaux are Bayonne (288,000 inhabitants), Limoges (283,000), Poitiers (255,000), Pau (241,000) and La Rochelle (206,000), as well as eleven major clusters.
Nouvelle-Aquitaine has five universities (Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Limoges, Poitiers and Pau) and several Grandes Écoles. It has three of the four historic resorts on the French Atlantic coast: Arcachon, Biarritz and Royan, as well as ski resorts in the Pyrenees, including Gourette.
Its economy includes agriculture, viticulture (notably the vineyards of Bordeaux and Cognac), tourism, aerospace manufacturing, the digital sector, design, chemical and pharmaceutical production, financial service in Niort, and industrial ceramics in Limoges. The new region includes major parts of Southern France ("Midi de la France"), influenced by Basque, Occitan, Poitevin and Saintongeais cultures. Historically, it is the "indirect successor" to medieval Aquitaine; much of the region was part of the former Duchy of Aquitaine.
Toponymy
The region's interim name Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes was a hyphenated placename, known as ALPC, created by hyphenating the merged regions' names – Aquitaine, Limousin and Poitou-Charentes – in alphabetical order.
In June 2016, a working group headed by historian , a former vice-president of Aquitaine, proposed the name "Nouvelle Aquitaine", meaning "New Aquitaine". The decision came after the popular favourite, "Aquitaine",Quel nom pour la nouvelle région ? Vous avez choisi..., Sud-Ouest, 4 December 2014, accessed 2 January 2015 faced resistance by regional politicians from Limousin and Poitou-Charentes. The other popular favourite, "Grande Aquitaine", was rejected for its connotation with a feeling of superiority. Alain Rousset, president of the region, concurred with the working group's conclusion, reaffirming that he considered the acronym "ALPC" no choice at all. For those deploring the loss of "Limousin" and "Poitou-Charentes", he noted that the predecessor region of Aquitaine subsumed the identities of the Périgord or the Pays Basque, which did not disappear during its 40 years of operation.
On 27 June 2016, just a few days ahead of 1 July deadline, the Regional Council almost unanimously adopted Nouvelle-Aquitaine as the region's permanent name. France's Conseil d'État approved Nouvelle-Aquitaine as the new name of the region on 28 September 2016, effective two days later.
History For the recent history of each former administrative regions and departments before 2016,
For the history of past entities covering much of the area of the region before the French revolution,
Geography At 84,061 square kilometres, Nouvelle-Aquitaine is larger than French Guiana, which makes it the largest region of metropolitan and overseas France.
Nouvelle-Aquitaine is delimited by four other French regions (Pays de la Loire to the north-west, Centre-Val de Loire to the northeast, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes to the east, and Occitania to the south-east), three autonomous communities in Spain to the south (from east to west, Aragon, Navarre, and Basque Country), and the North Atlantic Ocean (the eastern part of Bay of Biscay, Golfe de Gascogne in French) to the west.
Departments Nouvelle-Aquitaine comprises twelve departments: Charente, Charente-Maritime, Corrèze, Creuse, Dordogne, Gironde, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Deux-Sèvres, Vienne and Haute-Vienne.
Urban centers
Its largest city and only metropolis is Bordeaux, in the heart of an urban agglomeration of over one million inhabitants. Taking into consideration the urban area, the new region is home to six of the fifty largest metropolitan areas of French territory (population 2011):
Bordeaux (1,140,668 inhabitants) Bayonne (283,571) Limoges (282,876) Poitiers (254 051) Pau (240,898) La Rochelle (205,822).
In addition, the region has a network of medium-sized towns scattered throughout its territory, including:
Angoulême (108,304) Agen (79,764) Brive-la-Gaillarde (75,925) Niort (71,046) Périgueux (66,423) Bergerac (64,427) Villeneuve-sur-Lot (49,354) Dax (48,820) Mont-de-Marsan (40,269)
Geographical features
The region covers a large part of the Aquitaine Basin and a small portion of the Paris Basin (the border between the two being located at the "Seuil du Poitou") and the Limousin plate (part of the Massif Central) and the western part of the Pyrenees. It is part of five watersheds facing the Atlantic Ocean: Loire, Charente, Garonne and Dordogne (and their extension, the Gironde estuary) and Adour, giving rivers bordering land dedicated mostly to viticulture and to agriculture.
Nouvelle-Aquitaine features a large open coastline along the Atlantic Ocean, extending from the National Nature Reserve of Aiguillon Bay and the estuary of the Sèvre (near Charron) to Bidasoa (south of Hendaye). This coastline includes the islands of the Charentais Archipelago (Ré, Oléron, Aix, and Madame) and the inlet of Arcachon. The region is notable for its oyster farming (Marennes-Oléron and the Bassin d’Arcachon), mussel farming (Baie de l’Aiguillon), and tourism. Prominent resorts in the area include Arcachon (Côte d’Argent), Biarritz (Côte Basque), and Royan (Côte de Beauté).
From the to the coast of Labourd, the coastline is predominantly straight and characterized by high dunes, including Dune du Pilat, large lakes (such as Lac d'Hourtin-Carcans, Étang de Lacanau, Étang de Cazaux et de Sanguinet, and Lac de Biscarrosse et de Parentis), and wetlands (including the Réserve Naturelle Nationale des Dunes et Marais d'Hourtin), all situated above vast pine forests planted in the 19th century. The Landes forest, the most extensive in the region, covers nearly one million hectares (approximately 950,000 hectares of maritime pines), making it the largest artificial forest in Western Europe. This forest forms a vast triangle extending from the Pointe de Grave, north of Soulac-sur-Mer, to Hossegor in the south and Nérac in the east, replacing the sandy and marshy moorland that characterized the region for centuries. The Landes forest is partially included in the Landes de Gascogne Regional Natural Park, which begins south of Bordeaux.
Further north, adjacent to the Landes forest, the forest of la Coubre on the right bank of the Gironde estuary shares similar characteristics, covering nearly 8,000 hectares. Other significant forests in the region include the Irati Forest in the Basque Country, which spans over 17,000 hectares, and the Forest of the Double, located at the borders of Charente, Charente-Maritime, and Dordogne, which covers about 50,000 hectares and is dotted with nearly 500 lakes. Additionally, near Poitiers, the extends over nearly 6,800 hectares, and to the east, near Guéret, the encompasses 2,000 hectares.
The extreme southern region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine is characterized by the presence of the Pyrenees. The western part, known as the mountains of Labourd, consists mostly of high green hills. Further east, the highest point in the French Basque Country is Pic d'Orhy, which reaches 2,017 meters. The Pau region is notable for its more rugged, mineral landscapes, featuring high peaks often exceeding 2,000 meters. The highest point in the region, , stands at 2,974 meters. Other significant Pyrenean peaks in the region include Pic du Midi d'Ossau (2,884 m), (2,824 m), Pic de Ger (2,613 m) near the winter resort Gourette, Pic d'Anie (2,504 m), (2,472 m), (2,377 m), (2,147 m), and (2,044 m).
This hilly region is traversed by numerous mountain streams, known as gaves. Notable gaves in the area include the Gave de Pau, the , the Gave d'Ossau, and the Gaves réunis on the border of Landes and Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The Ossau Valley, one of the three valleys of Béarn, extends from the suburbs of Pau to Col du Pourtalet at the Spanish border. The region's glacial lakes, along with their diverse fauna and flora, contribute to its inclusion in the Pyrénées National Park.
Belonging to the Massif Central, Limousin features a varied landscape with high plateaus and some eroded peaks that dominate green valleys and forests of oak and chestnut trees. The Limousin plateau, intersected by the valleys of the Vienne (which flows through its capital, Limoges), Isle, Vézère, and the picturesque Corrèze with its deep reliefs, seldom exceeds 500 meters in elevation. It forms the watershed between the Loire basin to the north (including the sources of the Briance, , , and Gorre), the Dordogne basin to the south (including the sources of the Dronne, Isle, and Auvézère), and the maritime watershed of the Charente to the west.
The mountains of Limousin, which include a series of small mountains (Mont Fayat, Monedières Hills, Mont de Châlus) peak at Mont Bessou (976 m), in Corrèze. Further north, the mountains of Marche, which are divided into mountains of Monts de Guéret, mont d'Ambazac and Monts de Blond, are more like high wooded hills dotted with pastures, as real peaks. They culminate in Signal de Sauvagnac (701 m), in Haute-Vienne. Southwest of Limousin and Périgord northwest since 1998 are integrated into the Parc naturel régional Périgord Limousin.
The northern part of the region, which corresponds to the Haut-Poitou history, is organised around a tray agricultural and viticultural (vineyard of Haut-Poitou) irrigated by the Vienne, Clain or the Gartempe, which form so little valleys, often lined with oak forests. Further south, the Niortais this open landscapes (openfields) in grain-dominant, but also rich wetland areas such as the Marais Poitevin, a legacy of an old marine gulf filled with alluvium, which is divided into wet marshes (we speak more readily of "Green Venice") and marshes dried up, converted into mixed farming. Niort, on the Sèvre Niortaise, the main town of the Haut-Poitou outside Poitiers, is like a door of this "Green Venice" much of which belongs to the parc naturel régional du Marais poitevin, established in 1979, classified "Grand site de France".
Further south lie the Charentes, which correspond to the former provinces of Aunis, Angoumois and Saintonge. Aunis is not unlike the landscape of Niortais, with large marshes that extend from either side of La Rochelle and Rochefort (Baie d'Yves, marais de Rochefort, Broue and Brouage) but also the islands of Ré and Aix, with varied landscapes where pine forests mingle, sandy beaches or the curious lagoon of Fier d'Ars, the sands in constant motion, which houses a bird sanctuary. The interior of the territory is marked by the presence of a rich plain cereal evoking the Beauce by its open relief on the horizon. At the center of this space, the city of Surgères remained a pastureland where dairy farming has retained its importance: the small city is thus a production centers butter, Beurre de Charentes-Poitou.