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Alsace is the Germanic region of France. It is a region lying on the west bank of the river Rhine, between the Rhine and the Vosges mountains. To the north and east it shares a border with Germany; to the south with German-speaking Switzerland, and to the west with Lorraine and Franche Comté.

Alsace is made up of just two departments, the Lower Rhine, or Bas Rhin (67), capital Strasbourg, and the Upper Rhine, or Haut Rhin (68), capital Colmar. The biggest city in the Haut Rhin department is however Mulhouse,. Both of these departments are comprised of a rich fertile plain in the east - the flat lands of the Rhine valley - and the Vosges mountains in the west.

Historically speaking, Alsace was part of the German-speaking area of central Europe, and to this day a large proportion of the population, of all generations, speak or understand Alsacian, a dialectal form of German closely resembling the German spoken in Switzerland.

In the last two centuries, Alsace has passed from Germany to France and back , and back again; consequently, it is a region that was not part of France at the time of the makings of the modern-day nation, and has held on to a number of institutional differences, particularly concerning religious affairs. For example, Good Friday is a public holiday in Alsace, but not in the rest of France; and in Alsace, priests are paid by the state.

In terms of heritage and culture, with its villages of brightly-painted steep-roofed half-timbered houses, Alsace is definitely germanic. While today people are free - within limits - to choose what colour to paint a building, in the past the colours had a significance, and town houses, which often had shops or boutiques on the ground floor, were painted according to the type of shop - bakeries in one colour, butchers in another, shoemakers in a third colour, and so on. Today that is no longer the case, but the tradition of brightly coloured half-timbered houses has become firmly established as the local Alsatian style.

Alsace stands apart from any other region of France. The region's capital, Strasbourg, has all the feel of a central European city. In economic terms, Alsace is part of the Rhine valley corridor, one of the most important trading routes in Europe since the Middle Ages. Consequently its economic activity has always depended as much on its Germanic neighbours as on links with other parts of France, and as a result the region has long been one of the most propserous in France.