Page 63 - Northern Spain & Portugal: Pilgrimage into the Past

National Holidays: France

In addition to the holidays listed below, 05/08 World War II Victory Day
France celebrates a number of national
07/14 Bastille Day
holidays that follow a lunar calendar, such
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you will be traveling during these holidays,
please visit www.timeanddate.com/ 11/01 All Saints’ Day
holidays.
11/11 Armistice Day
01/01 New Year´s Day
12/25 Christmas Day
05/01 Labor Day

Historical Overview of France
France has been inhabited since prehistoric times, as is evidenced by the Lascaux cave
paintings in the Dordogne that date back about 25,000 years. By 10,000 B.C., human
communities had migrated across the whole of France. After the ice cap receded, the climate
became warmer and wetter, and by about 7000 B.C., farming and pastoral communities were
springing up. By 2000 B.C., copper made its debut, and by 1800 B.C., the Bronze Age had
arrived in the southeast of the country. Trade links with Spain, central Europe, and Wessex in
Britain were soon established.

When the Celts journeyed to the land they called Gaul sometime before the 7th century B.C.,
it was occupied by Iberians and Ligurians. Greeks colonized the area around Marseille—which
they called Massilia—founding the oldest city in France. And Julius Caesar conquered Gaul for
Rome in 57-52 B.C. Lutecia, later to become Paris, was built by the Gallo-Romans in 52 B.C.,
and the great Roman Amphitheater at Arles was built in 46 B.C. During the 5th century A.D.,
Germanic tribes invaded, especially the Franks, who converted to Christianity under Clovis I
and established the kingdom that became known as France.

On Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne, king of the Franks, was crowned by the pope in Rome
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Charlemagne’s empire was not long-lasting, it left an indelible imprint upon the French
consciousness, even though the vulnerability of successive rulers allowed regional princes,
such as the dukes of Burgundy and Normandy, to amass tremendous power. In 987, however,
the French nobility elected Hugh Capet king of France, and from this point, French national
history is generally agreed to begin. Capet helped to centralize the monarchy, led the Crusades
and wars with England, and instituted the Capetian dynasty.

During the 12th and 13th centuries, trade prospered, craft guilds were founded, and new towns
cropped up. Paris grew in importance as the royal city and as the intellectual mecca of Europe;
the newly established Sorbonne (1257) drew such teachers, lecturers, and philosophers as
Abelard, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas.

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