Drôme

Drôme is the southernmost department of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in southeastern France, named after the river Drôme. It had a population of 524,207 in 2023, and its prefecture is the city of Valence. The department was created on 4 March 1790 as one of the original 83 departments of France during the French Revolution, from part of the former province of Dauphiné. It reached its present borders in 1793, when the district of Carpentras was ceded to the newly formed department of Vaucluse. Drôme borders Ardèche to the west, Isère to the north and east, Hautes-Alpes to the east, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence to the southeast and Vaucluse to the south, and it surrounds the Canton of Valréas, an exclave of Vaucluse. It contains 362 communes, among them Rochefourchat, the smallest commune in France with only two inhabitants. Its climate is a transition between the oceanic climate of Lyon, the continental north and the Mediterranean south.