France historical timeline

History

France has been governed from its centre for longer and more deliberately than almost anywhere in Europe, and the traveller meets the results before meeting any monument. The railways radiate from one city, so two provincial towns three hours apart are often five hours apart by train. The administrative units created in 1790 are still the units on number plates and postcodes. And the Revolution did not merely change the government; it changed what physically stands, which is why some of the greatest medieval buildings in the country are roofless.

Chronology

1598 Henry IV signs the Edict of Nantes in April, granting the Calvinist Protestants -- the Huguenots -- substantial rights in a predominantly Catholic country, while upholding Catholicism as the established religion. It separated civil from religious unity and opened a path for tolerance, and the fortified Protestant towns of the south-west are what that settlement left standing.
1682 The king, the court and the royal government move permanently to Versailles on 6 May, and stay until 6 October 1789 apart from the Regency years. Moving the state out of Paris built the largest palace complex in Europe and left the capital without a royal court for a century -- which is why Versailles is a day trip rather than a district.
1789 Financial crisis and social distress force the convocation of the Estates General in May, its first meeting since 1614, and the Bastille is stormed on 14 July. What a visitor finds at the Bastille is the point: the fortress was demolished, so the address is a square and an opera house, and the date is the national holiday.
1790 The départements are created, replacing the historic provinces with deliberately uniform administrative units. They are the most visible institution in France to an outsider -- numbered, alphabetical, printed in every postcode, and the reason a prefecture town has civic buildings out of proportion to its size.
1889 The Eiffel Tower is completed, built by Gustave Eiffel's company between 1887 and 1889 as the centrepiece of the 1889 Exposition Universelle and to crown the centenary of the Revolution. It was meant to be temporary and is now the object the country is recognised by.
1914 The First World War runs from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918 and is fought largely on French soil. The Western Front is still legible across the north-east -- the cemeteries, the preserved trench ground at Verdun and the Somme, the village sites never rebuilt -- and it is why 11 November is a public holiday and why every French commune has its monument aux morts.
1940 The Battle of France runs from 10 May to 25 June, ending in German occupation and the Vichy regime. The four years that followed are the context for everything a visitor sees about 1944: the resistance memorials, the deportation sites, and the plaques on ordinary buildings marking where people were taken from or shot.
1940 The Lascaux cave is found, and the Abbé Henri Breuil records it from 21 September; his sketches are still used as study material because so many of the paintings have since degraded. The original caves have been closed to the public since 1963, so what a visitor now enters is a replica -- the clearest case in France of a site preserved by being made inaccessible.
1944 The Normandy landings take place on 6 June, the largest seaborne invasion in history, beginning the liberation of France and Western Europe. The beaches, batteries, cemeteries and museums along that coast are now a continuous memorial landscape and one of the most visited stretches of rural France.
1958 The Fifth Republic is established on 4 October by Charles de Gaulle. It concentrated power further, and the centralised state it created is what funds and programmes the national museums, the monuments agency and the rail network a visitor uses.
1979 Lascaux is inscribed on the World Heritage List as part of the Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley. The listing is why the valley is managed as a group rather than as one famous cave, and why several of its other sites are open when Lascaux itself is not.
1981 The TGV opens to the public between Paris and Lyon on 27 September. It reset how France is travelled -- Paris to Lyon in under two hours made the train beat the plane, and every line since has been built on the same radial pattern, which is why crossing the country without touching Paris is still awkward.
1994 The Channel Tunnel opens, initiated by Eurotunnel in 1988 and still the only fixed link between Great Britain and the European mainland. It is why London is on the same rail network as Paris and Brussels, and why a visitor can reach France from Britain without an airport.
2016 The number of metropolitan regions falls from 22 to 13 on 1 January, under a law passed in 2014. New names appeared on motorway signs and tourist literature -- Occitanie, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Grand Est -- and older maps, guidebooks and local usage still carry the previous ones, which is why the same area seems to have two names.

What survived, and what did not

The Revolution is the largest single event in the history of French building, and mostly on the destructive side. Abbeys and monasteries were suppressed, sold and quarried, which is why Cluny -- whose last basilica was the largest church in the world until St Peter's was built -- stands as a fragment, its monastery mostly demolished in 1810. Cathedral sculpture was defaced across the country: the twenty-eight statues of biblical kings on the west front of Notre-Dame, mistaken for French kings, were beheaded, and many of the heads were found in a 1977 excavation nearby and are now in the Musee de Cluny.

The counter-movement was equally consequential. The nineteenth-century restoration campaigns, above all Viollet-le-Duc's, saved buildings that were close to collapse and rebuilt them according to what their restorers believed they should have been -- so Carcassonne's roofs, Notre-Dame's spire and much of Pierrefonds are nineteenth-century work on medieval foundations. This is not a defect to be disappointed by; it is the reason the buildings are standing, and knowing which parts are which is most of what makes looking at them interesting. The 2019 Notre-Dame fire, which destroyed the spire and the wooden roof structure, made the point again -- the spire that burned was Viollet-le-Duc's, not the medieval one.

Verified against Wikipedia, September 2026.

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Checked against Wikipedia — Financial crisis and social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General in May 1789, its first meeting since 1614, The Bastille was stormed on 14 July, The Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras promoted centralization, administrative uniformity across departments, and a standardized legal code, The Fifth Republic was established on 4 October 1958 by Charles de Gaulle under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, Work started in September 1975 on the first high-speed line between Paris and Lyon, and it was inaugurated in September 1981, The French network has undergone major modernization since 1981 with the arrival of the TGV, expanded consistently since, In 2014 the French parliament passed a law reducing the number of metropolitan regions from 22 to 13, effective 1 January 2016, Cluny's last basilica was the world's largest church until St Peter's was built, and the monastery was mostly demolished in 1810, The twenty-eight statues of biblical kings on Notre-Dame's west facade, mistaken for French kings, were beheaded, and many heads were found in a 1977 excavation nearby and are displayed at the Musee de Cluny, The 2019 fire destroyed Notre-Dame's spire and wooden roof structure, The Edict of Nantes was signed in April 1598 by Henry IV, granting the Calvinist Protestants of France, the Huguenots, substantial rights in a predominantly Catholic nation, The edict upheld Catholicism as the established religion while granting religious tolerance to the Huguenots, and separated civil from religious unity, opening a path for secularism and tolerance, The king, the court and the royal government lived at Versailles permanently from 6 May 1682 until 6 October 1789, except during the Regency years of 1715 to 1723, The Eiffel Tower was designed and built by Gustave Eiffel's company from 1887 to 1889 as the centrepiece of the 1889 World's Fair and to crown the centennial of the French Revolution, The original Lascaux caves have been closed to the public since 1963 because their condition was deteriorating, and there are now a number of replicas, The Abbe Henri Breuil returned to Lascaux on 21 September 1940 and made sketches still used as study material because of the extreme degradation of many paintings, Lascaux was inducted into the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979 as an element of the Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vezere Valley, The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations of 6 June 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history, which began the liberation of France and the rest of Western Europe, The Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, initiated by Eurotunnel in 1988, and remains the only fixed link between Great Britain and the European mainland, The First World War ran from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918, a global conflict between the Allies and the Central Powers, The Second World War ran from 1 September 1939 to 2 September 1945 and was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians, The Battle of France ran from 10 May to 25 June 1940, the German invasion of the Low Countries and France during the Second World War (September 2026).