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The Provence is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean, looking over to Italy. It is part of the administrative region of Provence Alpes Cote d’azur. The traditional region of Provence comprises the departments of Var, Vaucluse, Bouches du Rhone and parts of Alpes de haute Provence and alpes maritimes. The Provence got its name simply because it was the first roman province not situated in Italy.
The original Roman province was called Gallia transalpina, then it was known as Gallia narbonensis, or just simply Provincia Nostra, which translates to ‘Our Province'. It extended from the Alps to the Pyrenees and north up to the Vaucluse, with its capital in Narbo Martius, which these days is called Narbonne.
In the 15th century the Conte of Provence was bounded by the Var River on the east, the Rhone River to the west, with the Mediterranean to the south, and a northern border that roughly followed the Durance River.
Most of Provence has a Mediterranean climate, characterized by hot, dry summers, mild winters, little snow, and abundant sunshine. Within Provence there are micro-climates and local variations, ranging from the Alpine climate inland from Nice to the continental climate in the northern Vaucluse. The winds of Provence are an important feature of the climate, particularly the mistral, which is a cold, dry wind which, especially in the winter, blows down the Rhone Valley to the Bouches du Rhone and the Var departments, and often reaches over 100 kph.
Historically the language spoken in Provence was Provencal, a dialect of the Occitan language, also known as langue d’oc, and closely related to Catalan. There are several regional variations: vivaro alpin, spoken in the Alps; and the Provencal variations of south, including the maritime, the rhoadanien, or Rhone valley, and the nicois, or Nice. Nicois is the archaic form of Provencal closest to the original language of the troubadors, and is sometimes to said to be literary language of its own. Provencal was widely spoken in Provence until the beginning of the 20th century, when the French government launched an intensive and largely successful effort to replace regional languages with French. Today Provencal is taught in schools and universities in the region, but is spoken regularly by a small number of people, probably less than five hundred thousand, mostly the elderly.