Pays de la Loire (French pronunciation:[pe.id(ə)lalwaʁ])[3] is one of the eighteen administrativeregions of France, located on the country'sAtlantic coast. It was created in the 1950s to serve as a zone of influence for its capital and most populated city,Nantes, one of a handful of French "balancing metropolises" (métropoles d'équilibre).[a] In 2020, Pays de la Loire had a population of 3,832,120.
Anjou: is largely absorbed into theMaine-et-Loire department; the rest in the immediately adjoining departments (the whole of the historical province Anjou is contained inside Pays de la Loire).
Maine: is now divided between theMayenne andSarthe departments; the whole of the former province of Maine is contained inside Pays de la Loire.
Part ofPoitou: is contained within theVendée department; most of the old province of Poitou is inside theNouvelle-Aquitaine region to the south.
Small part ofTouraine: southeast ofMaine-et-Loire department; the rest, most of the former province of Touraine is inside the Centre region.
Thus the name of the region, chosen by the French central government, was not based on history, but a postwar creation of purely geographical reference:Pays ("lands")de la Loire ("of theLoire").
A steep increase in the population was seen particularly as people migrated from all over France to the Loire region due to the rise of Nantes to prominence.
Thegross domestic product (GDP) of the region was €119.1 billion in 2018, accounting for 5.1% of French economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was €28,200 or 94% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 102% of the EU average.[7]
The biggest city in Pays de la Loire isNantes, which is the sixth most populated city inFrance with over 319,000 people (city proper) and a metropolitan population of almost 1,000,000.
Angers is another metropolis of the region. It has a metropolitan population of about 400,000 and is the third biggest job provider in north-westernFrance, just behindNantes andRennes.Saint-Nazaire is a major harbour town downstream from Nantes on the mouth of the Loire river.
Le Mans is another city in Pays de la Loire. Situated in north-east Pays de la Loire, Le Mans area is home to over 300,000 (metropolitan population).
^In the 1960s under the presidency ofCharles de Gaulle, eight large regional cities of France (Lille,Nancy,Strasbourg,Lyon,Nantes,Bordeaux,Marseille,Toulouse) were made "balancing metropolises", receiving special financial and technical help from the national government in order to counterbalance the excessive weight of Paris inside France.
^Tockner, Klement; Uehlinger, Urs; Robinson, Christopher T. (2009).Rivers of Europe. Academic Press. p. 183.ISBN978-0-12-369449-2. Retrieved11 April 2011.
