1.France is the world's most popular tourist destination – some 83.7 million visitors arrived in France, according to the World Tourism Organisation report published in 2014, making it the world's most-visited country.

2.France is the largest country in the EU, and known as 'the hexagon' – with an area of 551,000 sq km it's almost a fifth of the EU’s total area, and due to its six-sided shape France is sometimes referred to as l’hexagone. About a quarter is covered by forest; only Sweden and Finland have more.

3.The French Army was the first to use camouflage in 1915 (World War I) – the word camouflage came from the French verb ‘to make up for the stage’. Guns and vehicles were painted by artists called camofleurs.

4.In France you can marry a dead person – under French law, in exceptional cases you can marry posthumously, as long as you can also prove that the deceased had the intention of marrying while alive and you receive permission from the French president.

5.France was the first country in the world to ban supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food – since February 2016, shops must donate wastage to food banks or charities.

6. The Louvre Museum in Paris was the most visited museum in the world in 2014 – with an amazing 9.3 million visitors, it received almost the same amount of people as the population of Sweden.

7.Paris Gare du Nord is Europe's busiest railway station – and by far, with some 190 million passengers passing through each year. Inaugurated in 1846, it it also one of the world's oldest stations.

8. The Académie Française has aimed to preserve the French language since 1634 – by attempting to ban, somewhat unsuccessfully, foreign words such as blog, hashtag, parking, email and weekend. It was started by a small group of French intellects and officially recognised by Louis XIII in 1635. 

9.At least 40 percent of the music on private radio stations must be of French origin – since 1996, the country’s top media regulator the Conseil Supérieur de L’Audiovisuel (CSA) has been charged with enforcing this French law. The CSA also requires half of the French music quota to be less than six months old.

10.The first public screening of a movie was by French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière on 28 December 1895 – they used their invention the cinématographe (hence ‘cinema’) to show 10 films of about 50 seconds each at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. They made many more films but predicted that ‘cinema is an invention without any future'.

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