What are the 10 French cities ranked by bookshops?

In order: Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Lille, Nantes, Nice and Montpellier.

What is the top 5 of French cities ranked by bookshops?

Paris (590 bookshops), Lyon (86 bookshops), Marseille (78 bookshops), Toulouse (53 bookshops) and Bordeaux (39 bookshops).

Which city is 2nd in the ranking of French cities ranked by bookshops?

Lyon, at 86 bookshops, just behind Paris (590 bookshops).

Is Paris really the French city ranked first on bookshops?

Yes, at 590 bookshops, ahead of Lyon (86 bookshops) and Marseille (78 bookshops).

In which département is Paris?

Paris is in département 75, in the Île-de-France region.

What is the difference between Paris and Lyon?

Paris is at 590 bookshops, Lyon at 86 bookshops. The table gives the same figure for all 50 places, so any two of them can be compared the same way.

How many French cities does this ranking compare?

730, with the top 50 listed in full in the table below.

What are the French cities ranked by bookshops in 2026?

This ranking uses the most recent official figures published as of 2026: Paris leads with 590 bookshops.

Is there a complete ranking of French cities ranked by bookshops?

Yes, the table below: the top 50 of 730, each with its département and its region, and the exact method and scope stated underneath it.

In order: Paris (590 bookshops), Lyon (86 bookshops), Marseille (78 bookshops), Toulouse (53 bookshops), Bordeaux (39 bookshops), Strasbourg (37 bookshops), Lille (37 bookshops), Nantes (36 bookshops), Nice (32 bookshops), Montpellier (29 bookshops).

Where does this figure come from?

Straight from Ministère de la Culture / DEPS, base des lieux et équipements culturels (Basilic), joined to each commune by its INSEE code and never retyped by hand. A commune the source does not cover is left out of the table rather than shown as a zero: an absence and a measured zero are different facts, and only one of them is safe to rank.

Le Bon Rang

Everyday life · Ministère de la Culture / DEPS, base des lieux et équipements culturels (Basilic)

Bookshops: the top 50 French cities

Name: Bookshops: the top 50 French cities
Creator: Le Bon Rang
License: https://www.etalab.gouv.fr/licence-ouverte-open-licence/

Paris leads on bookshops, with 590 bookshops, then Lyon (86 bookshops) and Marseille (78 bookshops).

Could you put Bordeaux, Montpellier and Reims in this ranking's order? Le Bon Rang is that game, every day. Play today's game

Bookshops, 703 cities shown. The coloured surface adds up bookshops over 34,963 communes, 100.0% of the country's population, within about 30 km of each point. Every commune with a published value counts, not only the towns in the table. 27 ranked overseas cities are not plotted: they fall outside this map's frame. Projection: longitude compressed by cos(46.3°N), so east-west and north-south distances stay comparable. Source: Ministère de la Culture / DEPS, base des lieux et équipements culturels (Basilic) · 2026-02-18.

Find your town

Top 50 of 730 cities
Rank	City	Bookshops	Population	Region
1	75 Paris	590	2,103,778	Île-de-France
2	69 Lyon	86	519,127	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
3	13 Marseille	78	886,040	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
4	31 Toulouse	53	514,819	Occitanie
5	33 Bordeaux	39	267,991	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
6	67 Strasbourg	37	293,771	Grand Est
7	59 Lille	37	238,246	Hauts-de-France
8	44 Nantes	36	327,734	Pays de la Loire
9	06 Nice	32	357,737	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
10	34 Montpellier	29	310,240	Occitanie
11	35 Rennes	28	230,890	Bretagne
12	38 Grenoble	23	156,140	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
13	37 Tours	23	139,259	Centre-Val de Loire
14	49 Angers	22	159,022	Pays de la Loire
15	83 Toulon	21	179,116	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
16	30 Nîmes	19	151,839	Occitanie
17	13 Aix-en-Provence	19	149,695	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
18	76 Rouen	19	117,662	Normandie
19	57 Metz	18	122,572	Grand Est
20	14 Caen	17	109,400	Normandie
21	63 Clermont-Ferrand	16	146,351	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
22	78 Versailles	16	84,095	Île-de-France
23	21 Dijon	15	161,830	Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
24	72 Le Mans	15	146,249	Pays de la Loire
25	29 Brest	15	142,346	Bretagne
26	25 Besançon	15	118,489	Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
27	54 Nancy	15	103,671	Grand Est
28	64 Bayonne	15	54,306	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
29	42 Saint-Étienne	14	173,136	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
30	87 Limoges	14	129,937	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
31	66 Perpignan	14	121,616	Occitanie
32	17 La Rochelle	14	79,851	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
33	18 Bourges	14	64,186	Centre-Val de Loire
34	56 Vannes	14	55,790	Bretagne
35	51 Reims	13	177,674	Grand Est
36	76 Le Havre	13	166,687	Normandie
37	84 Avignon	13	92,188	Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
38	974 Saint-Denis (974)	12	155,634	La Réunion
39	80 Amiens	12	136,449	Hauts-de-France
40	74 Annecy	12	132,117	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
41	26 Valence	12	64,458	Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
42	29 Quimper	12	64,385	Bretagne
43	45 Orléans	11	116,357	Centre-Val de Loire
44	93 Montreuil	11	111,934	Île-de-France
45	86 Poitiers	11	89,916	Nouvelle-Aquitaine
46	81 Albi	11	51,290	Occitanie
47	35 Saint-Malo	11	47,439	Bretagne
48	68 Mulhouse	10	104,978	Grand Est
49	972 Fort-de-France	10	75,506	Martinique
50	56 Lorient	10	58,329	Bretagne

The table stops at 50. Search any of the 730 ranked towns ↑

The other end : Bookshops: the bottom 50 French cities

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Scope, method and sources

Scope: France, metropolitan and overseas, Corsica and the DROM included. This dataset holds every commune of 10,000 inhabitants or more, plus smaller communes famous enough to be household names, 1,131 in all. It is not the full list of 35,000 French communes, so a village can sit outside a ranking whose extreme it would otherwise hold.

Method and sources: populations are the INSEE legal populations, boundaries and coordinates come from the IGN commune registry, both served by geo.api.gouv.fr. Density is the population divided by the commune's area; distances are measured as the crow flies from the commune's centre. Data read on August 28, 2026.

12 questions about this ranking

What are the 10 French cities ranked by bookshops?: In order: Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Lille, Nantes, Nice and Montpellier.
What is the top 5 of French cities ranked by bookshops?: Paris (590 bookshops), Lyon (86 bookshops), Marseille (78 bookshops), Toulouse (53 bookshops) and Bordeaux (39 bookshops).
Which city is 2nd in the ranking of French cities ranked by bookshops?: Lyon, at 86 bookshops, just behind Paris (590 bookshops).
Is Paris really the French city ranked first on bookshops?: Yes, at 590 bookshops, ahead of Lyon (86 bookshops) and Marseille (78 bookshops).
In which département is Paris?: Paris is in département 75, in the Île-de-France region.
What is the difference between Paris and Lyon?: Paris is at 590 bookshops, Lyon at 86 bookshops. The table gives the same figure for all 50 places, so any two of them can be compared the same way.
Which city is 10th in the ranking of French cities ranked by bookshops?: Montpellier, at 29 bookshops.
How many French cities does this ranking compare?: 730, with the top 50 listed in full in the table below.
What are the French cities ranked by bookshops in 2026?: This ranking uses the most recent official figures published as of 2026: Paris leads with 590 bookshops.
Is there a complete ranking of French cities ranked by bookshops?: Yes, the table below: the top 50 of 730, each with its département and its region, and the exact method and scope stated underneath it.
What are the top 10?: In order: Paris (590 bookshops), Lyon (86 bookshops), Marseille (78 bookshops), Toulouse (53 bookshops), Bordeaux (39 bookshops), Strasbourg (37 bookshops), Lille (37 bookshops), Nantes (36 bookshops), Nice (32 bookshops), Montpellier (29 bookshops).
Where does this figure come from?: Straight from Ministère de la Culture / DEPS, base des lieux et équipements culturels (Basilic), joined to each commune by its INSEE code and never retyped by hand. A commune the source does not cover is left out of the table rather than shown as a zero: an absence and a measured zero are different facts, and only one of them is safe to rank.

The table below ranks the top 50 of the 730 cities in the dataset, each with its département, its region and the figure it is ranked on (bookshops), so you can see not just the order but how far apart the places are. The numbers are official public data: INSEE legal populations and the IGN commune registry, with the exact method and the exact scope stated under the table rather than left to be guessed at.

The same data answers neighbouring questions too: see Bookshops: the bottom 50 French cities and The most expensive cities to rent in France, or all rankings for the full list. All of it comes from Le Bon Rang, a free daily game that gives you five French cities and one of these statistics and asks you for the order.