It’s been a government-financed fiasco. France is one of the last countries to have its own website, then on the launch date – Bastille Day, 14th July – the site immediately crashed, and it took nearly a month to get it back up!

It has also cost a fortune, some say 4 million euros. Anyway, now it’s ready, it looks smart, but when it comes to Paris is it really any use? We had a look…

Photo : JasonW

When your site has graphics by Ora Ïto that cost an extra 100,000€ (yep, they threw the first design out after having already paid for it), and a logo at nearly 29,000€ (red white and blue. Inspired!) your website better hold up to scrutiny. So needless to say that there was a bit of a hullabaloo here when the site crashed on its first day and then disappeared for nearly a month. Now that it’s finally up, the question is, does it actually have anything to say?

Well, there are certainly some startling facts there. For example, looking at the section about Paris, we learned that it’s the biggest city in France (really?), and also the most densely populated in France (actually in Europe, but we’ll forgive them). Packed full of… links to other sites, www.france.fr is more a sort of sophisticated advertisement for the country (and its capital), with very little content to speak of, but lots of very, very short articles that send you off to articles created by other sites.

Even the little content there can be surprisingly vague. Like the page that says that the Paris region is more country than city (hmmm). The article says that there’s great biodiveristy in the area, but doesn’t give any proof or sources, and the film at the end of the article is about the Paris ring road. Odd.

It looks like most of the budget didn’t go on editorial but animation…

However, www.france.fr could turn out to be a good first stop for foreigner seeking out info about the country in general, even if (for Paris) it tends to send you to other sites that have more interesting reading matter, like www.paris.fr, www.iledefrance.fr or www.nouveau-paris-ile-de-france.fr. Now if those three don’t have what you’re looking for, perhapd it doesn’t exist!

To check out the Great Paris section of www.france.fr, click here.