page_title: Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
section_title: Major cities
hierarchical_section_title: Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur / Major cities
caption_attribution_description: Nice
context_page_description: Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur is one of the eighteen administrative regions of France, the far southeastern on the mainland. Its prefecture is Marseille. The region is roughly coterminous with the former French province of Provence, with the addition of the following adjacent areas: the former papal territory of Avignon, known as Comtat Venaissin; the former Sardinian-Piedmontese county of Nice, whose coastline is known in English as the French Riviera and in French as the Côte d'Azur; and the southeastern part of the former French province of Dauphiné, in the French Alps. Previously known by the acronym PACA, the region adopted the name Région Sud as a commercial name or nickname in December 2017. 5,007,977 people live in the region according to the 2015 census.
  It encompasses six departments in Southeastern France: Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Hautes-Alpes, Var and Vaucluse. It is bounded to the east by the France-Italy border, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea and by the Principality of Monaco, to the north by Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and to the west by Occitanie, with the Rhône river marking its westernmost border.
context_section_description: The largest cities in the region are Marseille (administrative capital city of the region), Nice, Toulon, and Aix-en-Provence, each with a population exceeding 100,000 inhabitants at the 1999 census. Along with Marseille, Nice is the second most populous city in the region with a city proper population of about 350,000 and an urban population exceeding 1 million.
  Marseille, with an urban area of 2 million inhabitants, is the largest and capital city of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. It is also the second most populated city in France, just behind Paris and the city with the third largest metropolitan population in France, behind Paris and Lyon respectively.
  Along with Nice and Marseille the region is also made internationally popular with Cannes which, though not a large city (population of 73,603 in 2012), hosts the annual Cannes Film Festival which has highly popularized the region. Also, Arles has become renowned as the city in which Vincent van Gogh lived and painted 300 paintings.
  Toulon is a large military harbour on the Mediterranean coast, with the French naval base placed there. It is the capital of the Var department in the region. Also, Aix-en-Provence has long been a university town, and to this day remains the most important educational centre in the region.
  Below is a list of the most populated cities in the region along with their population (city proper) according to the most recent census.
  Aix-en-Provence – 142,743
  Antibes (includes Juan-les-Pins) – 76,994
  Arles – 52,729
  Aubagne – 46,423
  Avignon – 90,194
  Cannes – 73,603
  Draguignan – 38,258
  Fréjus – 52,389
  Grasse – 51,580
  Hyères – 56,275
  La Seyne-sur-Mer – 64,903
  Le Cannet – 40,940
  Mandelieu-la-Napoule – 22,714
  Marseille – 861,636
  Martigues – 76,471
  Mougins – 19,703
  Nice – 343,875
  Toulon – 167,729
  Villeneuve-Loubet – 14,427
caption: Nice
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