Provence Alpes

The region Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur is a French administrative region from the south-east of the country. It is often referred to by the acronym PACA.

The region is situated next to Italy from which it is separated by the Southern Alps. Up north, there is the Rhônes-Alpes region and, to the west, the Rhône River, which indicates the border with the Languedoc-Roussillon region. The PACA region is bordered down south by the Mediterranean Sea.

The PACA region gathers six departments, formerly from the Ancien Régime provinces of Provence and Dauphiné. A part of the Vaucluse department is constituted by the annexation of the Comtat Venaissin during the revolutionary period, as well as for the Alpes-Maritimes region with the left bank of the Var River, which was the County of Nice annexed to France in 1860 during the Second Empire (the County of Nice was an old part of the duchy of Provence before 1388, when Nice devoted itself to Savoy). The logo of the Regional Council reminds all four regions, resuming their former prestige gathered under the same flag.