France–Italy border


The France–Italy border is the international boundary between France and Italy.

Features

The Franco-Italian border is long, in southeast France and northwest Italy. It begins at the west tripoint of France–Italy–Switzerland at the top of Mont Dolent, in the French commune of Chamonix, the Italian city of Courmayeur,, and the Swiss commune of Orsières.
The boundary then follows a general direction towards south, to the Mediterranean, it reaches the sea at Menton in France and Ventimiglia in Italy. The border separates three regions and four provinces of Italy from two regions and five departments of France.

Road crossings

The Franco-Italian border is mountainous. The points of paved road crossings between the two countries are, from north to south, quoted in this exhaustive list:
The border between the two countries dates back to that separating the Kingdom of Sardinia and France during the 19th century. In 1860, the Treaty of Turin links the Savoy and County of Nice to France; the border between the French Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia was surveyed the following year.
At the conclusion of the Battle of France in World War II, Italy claimed and administered French territory under the terms of the armistice of 24 June 1940 which were extended from 11 November 1942. The Germans occupied the Italian zone from 1943, and the territory was finally liberated by France in 1944. The border was then changed by the Treaty of Paris in 1947, when France acquired Tende, La Brigue, Mont Chaberton and the Lake of Mont Cenis.
In the 21st century, an ongoing issue to be resolved concerns the demarcation of the border at the top of Mont Blanc.