France Coloring Pages
France is nicknamed "the Hexagon" because its outline on a map has six sides. Inside those sides you'll find knights and queens, cathedral gargoyles, fields of purple lavender and the sky over Paris where people first flew in a hot air balloon.
Jump to: Maps | Flags | Landmarks | Heroes and Legends | National Symbols | Fields and Vineyards | Over the Rooftops | Artists | Fun Facts
Maps of France
French Flags
Landmarks of Paris
Arc de Triomphe
Napoleon ordered this giant arch in 1806 to honour his army, but it wasn't finished until 1836, long after he was gone.
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair and was only supposed to stand for 20 years. Parisians kept it because it turned out to be handy for radio signals.
Notre Dame
Building Notre Dame took close to 200 years, which means the people who laid the first stones never saw it finished.
Heroes and Legends
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor of Aquitaine ruled a big piece of southern France in her own name before she married a king, and then she married another one. That made her queen of France and later queen of England, which hardly anyone managed in the Middle Ages. Her court was famous for its poets and singers...
Eleanor of Aquitaine coloring pages
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc was about 17 when she led the French army, and she carried a banner instead of a sword. She was a farm girl from the village of Domrémy who was sure she'd been called to help France win a long war with England...
The Three Musketeers
"All for one and one for all!" comes from a French adventure novel set in the 1620s. Its hero, D'Artagnan, was a real person, but he was still a child when the story takes place. In the book he rides into Paris on a skinny pony and upsets three musketeers in a single day...
Three Musketeers coloring pages
National Symbols
Iris
France's national flower is the iris, which gets its name from the Greek goddess of the rainbow. That fits, because irises come in purple, yellow, blue and white and almost every shade in between...
Rooster
The Latin word for rooster was also the word for a person from Gaul, which is what France used to be called. That pun is why the rooster ended up standing for the whole country, and many French sports teams still wear one on their shirts...
Fields and Vineyards
Grapes
Grapes have grown in France for well over 2,000 years, and the vineyards around Bordeaux stretch for miles. Every winter the vines get cut back hard, and by summer they've grown right back and the bunches are hanging from them again...
Lavender
Every summer the hills of Provence in southern France turn purple with lavender. The fields are planted in long curving rows that look like stripes from above, and the bees that visit them make honey that tastes of the flowers...
Over the Rooftops
Gargoyles
The word gargoyle comes from an old French word for throat, because gargoyles started out as rain spouts that sent water shooting out of their mouths. The cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris is famous for the stone creatures that look down from its roof...
Hot Air Balloons
Before any people went up in a hot air balloon, the first passengers were a sheep, a duck and a rooster. They floated over the palace at Versailles in 1783 while the king and queen watched, and they landed safely a few minutes later. About two months after that, two men made the first flight over Paris with people on board.
Hot air balloon coloring pages
Food, Art, Music and Cycling
French Cooking
In 2022 UNESCO added the craft of making the French baguette to its list of cultural treasures. A traditional baguette is made from just four things: flour, water, salt and yeast, and the bakers shape every loaf by hand.
French Horn
The modern French horn was mostly developed in Germany, but it grew out of the hunting horns that were blown in French forests. If you uncoiled one and stretched it out, it would be well over three metres long.
Tour de France
The leader of the Tour de France wears a yellow jersey because the newspaper that started the race was printed on yellow paper. The riders pedal around 3,500 kilometres (2,200 miles) over three weeks.
Artwork and Artists of France
French Painters
The word Impressionism started as an insult. A critic made fun of a Monet painting called Impression, Sunrise, and the painters liked the name so much they kept it.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
In Fragonard's painting The Swing, the girl is swinging so high that her shoe has flown right off her foot. It comes from the Rococo era, a style from 1700s France that loved gardens, ruffles and curly shapes, and you can see all three in the scene.
Claude Monet
Monet had a pond built in his garden at Giverny so he'd always have something to paint, and then he painted it about 250 times. He kept going from the late 1890s until he died in 1926. In many of the paintings there's no sky or shoreline at all, just water, lily pads and the reflections floating on top.
Five fun facts about France
- Eiffel Tower: The Eiffel Tower, located in Paris, is one of the most iconic landmarks in the world. It was completed in 1889 and stands at a height of 330 meters (1,083 feet). It attracts millions of visitors each year.
- Louvre Museum: The Louvre in Paris is one of the biggest and most visited art museums in the world, and it used to be a royal palace. The Mona Lisa hangs there, and the line to see her is long even though she's smaller than most people expect.
- French Cuisine: French cuisine is renowned worldwide for its exquisite flavors and techniques. French dishes such as croissants, baguettes, escargots (snails), and crème brûlée have become internationally recognized symbols of French gastronomy.
- Tour de France: The Tour de France is an annual bicycle race that takes place in France. It is one of the most prestigious and challenging cycling races in the world. It covers approximately 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) over a span of three weeks.
- French Riviera: The French Riviera, also known as the Côte d'Azur, is a glamorous and picturesque coastal region in southeastern France. It is famous for its beautiful beaches, luxury resorts, and charming towns such as Nice, Cannes, and Saint-Tropez.