By many measures, to be Interior Minister in France today is to have the country's toughest job.

The Greeks brought wine to Provence, but the Romans have left an incomparable mark on the landscape, finds Pamela Wade.

Barack Obama has spoken to France's President Francois Hollande as a row rages over claims that a US spy agency eavesdropped on millions of phone calls of French citizens.

France wants answers from the US after it was revealed the NSA swept up - and in some cases recorded - 70.3 million French phone calls and emails over a month.

Deborah Telford plunges into polishing up her command of French with practical lessons in a Provence village.

There's nothing like a beautifully shot film to make you feel like up-and-leaving the very next day. Here are five examples that show off their stunning destinations to full effect.

This amazing GoPro cam footage captured some amazing scenes as it was placed upon an eagle flying through Mer de Glace glacier and Montenvers Railway on northern slopes of the Mont Blanc massif, in the French Alps.

In a televised address, French President Francois Hollande says he hasn't ruled out the "military option" against Syria.

An 84-year-old man has been killed near Paris after an elephant belonging to a local circus escaped from its pen and hit him with its trunk.

French and British investigators probing a quadruple murder in the French Alps say they are looking at a dispute over a multi-million-dollar family inheritance as a motive for the slayings.

An enormous hand-sculpted rock carving in France nearly six years in the making could be the largest work of Maori art in the Northern Hemisphere.

At a remote spot deep in the French countryside, Britons Bob and Diane Kirkwood have created an eco-friendly refuge that is like taking a step back in time.

Paris has launched a new kind of tourist guide: not a guide for tourists, but a guide to different types of tourists.

Two wheels is the ideal way to travel the back roads, writes Trish Murphy.

A train carrying hundreds of passengers derailed and crashed into a station outside Paris on the eve of a major holiday weekend.

Three stylish women, frequent visitors to France, share their favourite Parisian haunts.

Fire has ravaged a Qatari-owned 17th-century mansion in the heart of Paris.

When Francois Hollande became France's leader, it was with the insistence that he was a man of the people, who despised patriotic pomp and shunned the splendours of the Elysee Palace and its use as a political prop.

France's Government spies on its own citizens in the same way as the United States, it was claimed yesterday.

Although I spend lengthy periods every year living in a town of about 12,000 people in southern France I sometimes forget the two, sometimes three-hour lunch.

The French are increasingly shunning the traditional baguette, opting instead for cereal at breakfast, biscuits at tea time and pasta and rice dinners.

The Eiffel Tower's lifts have ground to a halt as an industrial dispute over security and working conditions brought workers at the Paris monument out on strike.