Southern France

Southern France, also known as the South of France or colloquially in French as le Midi, is a defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin,[3] Spain, the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. It includes: southern Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the west, Occitanie in the centre, the southern parts of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the northeast, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in the southeast, as well as the island of Corsica in the southeast. Part of the Southern Europe.

The term Midi derives from mi (‘middle’) and di (‘day’) in Old French, comparable to the term Mezzogiorno to indicate Southern Italy or Miazăzi which is a synonym for South in Romanian. The time of midday was synonymous with the direction of south because in France, as in all of the Northern Hemisphere north of the Tropic of Cancer, the sun is in the south at noon. The synonymy existed in Middle French as well, where meridien can refer to both midday and south. The Midi is considered to start at Valence, hence the saying à Valence le Midi commence.