Provence

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Provence (French: Provence, Occitan: Provença) is a historical region of southwestern Europe, politically in France and culturally in Occitania, stretching from the lower Rhone Valley to the southern Alps along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It is an administrative region of France whose official name is Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur (PACA), whose capital is Marseille and which comprises the six departments of Vaucluse, Bouches-du-Rhône, Hautes-Alpes, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Var and Alpes-Maritimes. It has 4 818 000 inhabitants in an area of 31 400 km².

In a more cultural view, some adjacent zones are often considered as parts of Provence although they do not belong to the administrative region. It is particularly the case of western Gard (around Nîmes) and southern Drôme (around Montélimar and Nyons). On the contrary, some zones included in the administrative region have a strong, local identitity and part of their inhabitants hardly identify themselves as Provençals: it can occur in the southern Alps (around Gap) and the County of Nice (around Nice).