Position and size · INSEE / geo.api.gouv.fr
Marseille comes last on distance to the sea, with 0 km, ahead of Cannes (0 km) and Calais (0 km).
| Rank | City | Distance to the sea km | Population | Region |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13 Marseille | 0 | 886,040 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 2 | 06 Cannes | 0 | 74,350 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 3 | 62 Calais | 0 | 67,571 | Hauts-de-France |
| 4 | 35 Saint-Malo | 0 | 47,439 | Bretagne |
| 5 | 62 Boulogne-sur-Mer | 0 | 40,539 | Hauts-de-France |
| 6 | 76 Dieppe | 0 | 28,496 | Normandie |
| 7 | 59 Grande-Synthe | 0 | 20,239 | Hauts-de-France |
| 8 | 64 Hendaye | 0 | 18,102 | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
| 9 | 62 Outreau | 0 | 13,138 | Hauts-de-France |
| 10 | 06 Beausoleil | 0 | 11,936 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 11 | 2A Porto-Vecchio | 0 | 11,198 | Corse |
| 12 | 2B Calvi | 0 | 5,788 | Corse |
| 13 | 06 Villefranche-sur-Mer | 0 | 5,008 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 14 | 56 Quiberon | 0 | 4,876 | Bretagne |
| 15 | 14 Trouville-sur-Mer | 0 | 4,619 | Normandie |
| 16 | 14 Deauville | 0 | 3,539 | Normandie |
| 17 | 76 Étretat | 0 | 1,102 | Normandie |
| 18 | 76 Le Havre | 1 | 166,687 | Normandie |
| 19 | 59 Dunkerque | 1 | 86,263 | Hauts-de-France |
| 20 | 17 La Rochelle | 1 | 79,851 | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
| 21 | 06 Antibes | 1 | 77,637 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 22 | 44 Saint-Nazaire | 1 | 74,568 | Pays de la Loire |
| 23 | 56 Lorient | 1 | 58,329 | Bretagne |
| 24 | 83 Hyères | 1 | 55,858 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 25 | 83 Saint-Raphaël | 1 | 37,113 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 26 | 17 Royan | 1 | 19,425 | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
| 27 | 64 Saint-Jean-de-Luz | 1 | 14,857 | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
| 28 | 22 Plérin | 1 | 14,425 | Bretagne |
| 29 | 62 Berck | 1 | 12,951 | Hauts-de-France |
| 30 | 06 Roquebrune-Cap-Martin | 1 | 12,037 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 31 | 59 Gravelines | 1 | 11,430 | Hauts-de-France |
| 32 | 83 Le Pradet | 1 | 10,933 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 33 | 62 Marck | 1 | 10,467 | Hauts-de-France |
| 34 | 29 Fouesnant | 1 | 10,436 | Bretagne |
| 35 | 30 Aigues-Mortes | 1 | 8,699 | Occitanie |
| 36 | 13 Cassis | 1 | 6,661 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 37 | 14 Honfleur | 1 | 6,640 | Normandie |
| 38 | 14 Cabourg | 1 | 3,725 | Normandie |
| 39 | 2A Bonifacio | 1 | 3,344 | Corse |
| 40 | 66 Collioure | 1 | 2,756 | Occitanie |
| 41 | 06 Èze | 1 | 2,144 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 42 | 64 Guéthary | 1 | 1,306 | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
| 43 | 06 Nice | 2 | 357,737 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 44 | 83 Fréjus | 2 | 59,719 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 45 | 34 Sète | 2 | 45,337 | Occitanie |
| 46 | 22 Saint-Brieuc | 2 | 44,364 | Bretagne |
| 47 | 64 Anglet | 2 | 43,271 | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
| 48 | 13 La Ciotat | 2 | 38,477 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 49 | 06 Vallauris | 2 | 29,259 | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur |
| 50 | 64 Biarritz | 2 | 26,206 | Nouvelle-Aquitaine |
The table stops at 50. Search any of the 1,052 ranked towns ↑
The other end : The French cities farthest from the sea
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. This particular ranking is metropolitan only: the distance to the coast is measured against the coastlines of the Hexagon and Corsica, which would put an overseas port thousands of kilometres from a sea it sits on, so no value is published for overseas France rather than a wrong one.
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.
The table below ranks the top 50 of the 1,052 cities in the dataset, each with its département, its region and the figure it is ranked on (distance to the sea), 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 The lowest cities in France and The French cities where rugby is least played, 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.