Gers

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Gers

Coat of arms of the Gers department
Location

Administration
Department number:	32
Region:	Midi-Pyrénées
Prefecture:	Auch
Subprefectures:	Condom Mirande
Arrondissements:	3
Cantons:	31
Communes:	463
President of the General Council:	Philippe Martin PS
Statistics
Population	Ranked 89th
-1999	172,335
Population density:	28/km²
Land area¹:	6257 km²

¹ French Land Register data, which exclude estuaries, and lakes, ponds, and glaciers larger than 1 km².

The Gers (French: le Gers, Occitan: Gers) is a department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in the southwest of France named after the Gers River.

1 History and culture
2 Geography and demography
3 Climate
4 Tourism
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] History and culture

In the Middle Ages, the Lordship of L'Isle-Jourdain was nearby.

The Gers is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from parts of the former provinces of Guyenne and Gascony.

The inhabitants of the department are called les Gersois.

The culture is largely agricultural, with great emphasis on the local gastronomical specialties such as:

Armagnac brandy,
Côtes de Gascogne,
Floc de Gascogne,
foie gras,
and wild mushrooms.

Also, some prominent cultivated crops are corn, colza, sunflowers and grain.

The Gascon language is a dialect of Occitan, but it is not widely spoken.

There has been a heavy influence of waves of both British and Spanish immigrants.

Alexandre Dumas created the famous Gersois d'Artagnan, the fourth musketeer of The Three Musketeers. A museum to d'Artagnan is found in the Gersois village of Lupiac.

[edit] Geography and demography

Located in southwestern France, the Gers is part of the Midi-Pyrénées region. It is surrounded by the departments of Hautes-Pyrénées, Haute-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne, Lot-et-Garonne, Landes, and Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The Gers is often referred to as amongst the least densely populated, or most rural, areas in all of Western Europe.

List of the 10 most important cities of the departement:

#	Gemeente	Aantal inwoners (1999)
1	Auch	21 911
2	Condom	7 256
3	Fleurance	6 279
4	L'Isle-Jourdain	5 557
5	Lectoure	3 941
6	Eauze	3 888
7	Vic-Fezensac	3 614
8	Mirande	3 564
9	Gimont	2 741
10	Pavie	2 220

[edit] Climate

The annual rain varies from more than 900 mm in the south-west of the department, to less than 700 mm in the North-East (Auch, Condom, Lectoure).

The winters vary, with often negative temperatures, but the climate remains soft all the same and dry, the department is one of sunniest of France.

The summers are very hot and dry, the temperatures often is exceeding 40°. Auch is together with Toulouse and Millau one of the hottest cities of France, with often more than 300 sunny days in the year.