Bonjour and welcome to the tour through the fascinating world of French Flag Facts!
France, the ‘European capital of Culture’ has a fascinating history and is known to be a model regarding the unity of country already known in the faraway past.
The national flag or France or ‘drapeau tricolore’ consists of three vertical couloured bands of blue white and red. France had an initial emblem, the lily which was specific to this country beginning with the 12th century.
The actual flag is used since the French Revolution and there are several theories regarding the symbolism of its colours. The French Flag is usually associated with brotherhood, equality and freedom, the ideals of the French Revolution and is also used as a symbol of human rights throughout the world. However, there are other French Flag facts to be taken into consideration before believing this first theory.
The Dutch Flag existed in prior to the French Flag and has exactly the same colours: blue, white and red, only that they are disposed horizontally. It is possible that when designing the French Flag, people had as inspiration the Dutch Flag and its symbolism was allocated afterwards.
There is another possibility regarding the meaning of the French Flag: the blue and red colours were symbols of Paris since 1358 and white was the symbol of royalty. However, specialists think that this variant is less possible because the first persons that used the Tricolour as national French Flag were the revolutionists from 1789 which were against the superiority of the nobility and the monarchy.
There has been some argue regarding the dimensions of the colour stripes because of the middle white stripe. The human eye has the tendency to see equal colour stripes in a disproportionate way if there is a white colour in the middle. The dimensions of the flag were changed several times, but remained with equal stripes dimensions after Napoleon’s reign because the citizens realized that the equal colour stripes do not look disproportionate in the wind breeze.
In the folklore is believed that blue and red symbolize the nobility indeed and white is the symbol of Joan of Arc, her bravery and sacrifice. The fact that France has remained united for so many centuries made it powerful, tolerant and a centre of art where equality is the groundwork.
Don’t forget that one of the most important French Flag facts is that the French Flag is a worldwide symbol for freedom, brotherhood and equality!