France - stock travel footage and photography

France

Blessed with an amazing combination of landscape, from jagged peaks and glaciers to a long Mediterranean coast specked with lots of resorts, and with a remarkable mild climate France is an important destination for any traveler, its turmoiled history being synonimous with the history of Europe.

But France stands out in the European mind mainly for its long and influential cultural tradition. It has lots of sites to visit from the cathedrals of the North to the southern town-resorts, that were home in times for many famous writers, philosophers and painters.
Paris, the city of lights, (Quicktime, Real, Windows) is the European symbol of culture and civilization, a Mecca of the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, a place that any European would have liked to visit.
Painters and writers congregated on Montmartre and Montparnasse, thinkers and philosophers clogged the cafes and people from all over Europe came here to taste first hand the life and the civilization of the great city.
Also, for many, France associates itself with fashion and fragrances, with cheese, wine and fine gourmet dinners or cabaret and late night entertainment.

After leaving Paris, we visit in the southern part of the country Languedoc and Roussillion, two regions that were part of the famous and cultivated Pays Occitane. Beginning in Montpellier we stroll through the cities on the Mediterranean coast and visit, the magnificent cathedrals of Beziers and Narbonne, Sette with its picturesque canals, Carcassonne, the best preserved medieval town of Europe, the Cathar castles from Les Corbiers region, testimony of a successful but short lived civilization of Pays d'Occitane. We immerse here in the 13th century Albigense crusade of the Papality against these citadels that brought the demise of the Cathars belief and brought the rise of the Inquisition that will loom for hundreds of years over Western Europe.
We visit Collioure, a very picturesque city on the Mediterranean coast that hosted several famous fauvist painters including Matisse and Derain, reproduction of their paintings being hanged in the location from where they painted them.
We continue to Roussillion, the French Catalonia, and visit its beautiful monasteries of Serabonne, St. Michael de Cuxa and St. Martin de Canigou stopping also at several fortified cities on the way.
We cross the Pyrinees in Andorra, an independent principality and return to France to visit Lourdes, the most important pilgrimage place for the Catholics of Europe. Further we continue towards west, and visit Pau, the birthplace of Henry de Navarre, Biarittz, the in resort for the aristocracy at the end of the 19th century, the Basque city of St. Jean de Luz and return all the way to spend several days on the Mediterranean coast at Grande Motte, a futuristic resort built in the 70s.
From here we will do short incursions to Nimes, to visit its famous Roman amphitheater and to Aigues Morte, a city still completly surrounded by fortified walls.

We return to France and visit its famous Cote d'Azur with the world reknown cities of Nice, Cannes, Antibes and the Principality of Monaco, with picturesque villages like Eze, going all the way to Cap Ferat and Menton near the Italian border and, back to St Tropez.
From here we continue to Provence, and visit Grasse, St Paul de Vence, Avignon, Arles, Aix-en Provence and Marseille, strolling in Van Gogh's steps in St Remy de Provence and visiting the beautiful citadel of Les Baux de Provence. We end out this part of the tour with the impressive Roman ruins of Orange and Pont du Gard.

See our travel video and you'll never forget these places.