Strasbourg

Strasbourg is a prefecture and commune, and the largest city of the Grand Est region of northeastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin department and the official seat of the European Parliament. In 2023, the city had 294,229 inhabitants, while Greater Strasbourg had a population of 522,596. Strasbourg's metropolitan area had a population of 875,163 the same year, making it the eighth-largest metro area in France and home to 14% of the Grand Est region's inhabitants. The transnational Strasbourg-Ortenau Eurodistrict had a population of roughly 1,020,000 in 2020. Strasbourg is one of the de facto three main capitals of the European Union (alongside Brussels, Luxembourg), as it is the seat of several European institutions, such as the European Parliament, the Eurocorps and the European Ombudsman of the European Union. An organization separate from the European Union, the Council of Europe (with its European Court of Human Rights, its European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines most commonly known in French as "Pharmacopée Européenne", and its European Audiovisual Observatory) is also located in the city. Together with Geneva (United Nations) and New York City (United Nations world headquarters), Strasbourg is among the few cities in the world that are not national capitals and host international organisations of the first order. The city is the seat of many non-European international institutions such as the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine and the International Institute of Human Rights. It is the second city in France in terms of international congresses and symposia, after Paris. Strasbourg's historic city centre, the Grande Île (Grand Island), was classified a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988, with the newer "Neustadt" being added to the site in 2017. Strasbourg is immersed in Franco-German culture and although violently disputed...