Alpes Maritimes

Alpes Maritimes is a department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in the extreme southeast corner of France. The inhabitants of the department are called Maralpins, but are usually referred as Azuréens (inhabitants of the Côte d'Azur). The Alpes-Maritimes department is surrounded by the departments of Var in the southwest, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in the north-west, Italy and the Principality of Monaco to the east, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Its topography is very mixed. As its name suggests, most of the department is a constituent part of the overall topographic Alps - including the Maritime Alps - but it also has the distinction of being a coastal district with its Mediterranean coast. The coastal area, urbanized and densely populated (shaded in red on the map), includes all the cities in an almost continuous conurbation from Cannes to Menton, while the larger but sparsely populated mountainous area (light green) is fully rural with the exception of the three large resorts of Valberg (created in 1936), Auron (created in 1937), and Isola 2000 (created in 1971). When Nice became part of Frence in 1860, it was still a small town; the department had fewer than 200,000 inhabitants. However, the population grew quickly from 300,000 at the beginning of the 20th century to over a million. The population is aging because of the number of retirees who move to the coast. The population is now concentrated in the urban region that includes Antibes, Cannes, Grasse, Nice, and Menton, and which constitutes 90% of the total population. The department had 1,079,100 inhabitants in 2009, making it the nineteenth most populated department in France. There are 163 communes including 106 under 2000 inhabitants (representing a total of 55,219 inhabitants), 38 from 2000 to 9999 inhabitants (total 158,373 inhabitants), 15 between 10,000 to 49,999 inhabitants (total 323,829 inhabitants), 3 between 50,000 to 199,999 inhabitants (Antibes, Cannes, and Grasse, total 200,944 inhabitants), and one of 340,735 inhabitants (Nice). The Population density rose to 251 inhabitants per square kilometre in 2009.