Region of France
The arms of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur bring together the old arms of Provence, four red pallets on gold, with the dolphin of the Dauphiné and the crowned eagle of the County of Nice. In 1999 the regional council adopted a flag taking up the arms of the old provinces, while the red and gold flag of Provence, though unofficial, is used today on many public buildings and at cultural events across the Provençal area.
Flag
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Coat of Arms
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| Region | Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA), created in 1960 as Provence-Côte d’Azur-Corse, renamed in 1976; prefecture Marseille |
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| Departments | Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Hautes-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var, Vaucluse |
| Arms | Per pale, Provence (Or, four pallets Gules); per fess, the Dauphiné (the dolphin) and the County of Nice (the eagle) |
| Flag | Adopted by the regional council in 1999, taking up the arms of the old provinces |
| Traditional flags | Provence (red and gold), the Dauphiné, Nice, Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, the Occitan cross |
| Brand | “Région Sud – Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur”, used by the regional council since 2018 |
The coat of arms of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.
As given in French Wikipedia’s article on the region:
Parti, au premier d’or aux quatre pals de gueules, au second coupé en premier d’or au dauphin d’azur crété, barbé, loré, peautré et oreillé de gueules, et en second d’argent à l’aigle couronné de gueules, empiétant une montagne aux trois coupeaux de sable issant d’une mer d’azur et ondée d’argent.
That is: per pale, first Or four pallets Gules; second per fess, above Or a dolphin Azure, its crest, beard, fins, tail and ears Gules, below Argent an eagle Gules crowned, standing on a mountain of three peaks Sable, issuing from a sea Azure waved Argent. The arms adopted by the regional council bring together the old arms of Provence with those of the County of Nice and of the Dauphiné, three of the components of a region that covers almost all of the old province of Provence, the County of Nice, Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, and the south-east of the Dauphiné. According to French Wikipedia’s armorial of the regions, the arms have been used in the logo of the regional council since 1999.
The four red pallets on gold are the traditional banner of the County of Provence. They originate in the arms of the counts of Barcelona and were adopted by their descendants, among them the counts of Provence, the counts of Foix (with only three pallets), the kings of the Crown of Aragon in the 12th century and the kings of Majorca in the 13th century. According to an alternative theory, the emblem originated in Provence, and the Catalans later drew on the arms of the kingdom of Arles for their own; a seal older than the first appearance of the Catalan arms, kept at the Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, is put forward as proof.
The dolphin is the symbol of the Dauphiné, whose south-eastern part, French since 1349, forms the department of Hautes-Alpes.
The eagle came originally from the Holy Roman Empire, on which the House of Savoy depended, and it was the symbol of the County of Nice, attached to France in 1860 (Tende and La Brigue followed in 1947). It is found today in the arms of the department of Alpes-Maritimes and of the city of Nice.
French Wikipedia’s armorial of the regions also shows the emblem of the gendarmerie for the region, which combines the County of Nice and Angevin Provence: parti d’argent à l’aigle couronné au vol abaissé de gueules posée sur trois coupeaux de sinople, le tout sur une mer d’azur ondée d’argent ; et d’azur à une fleur de lys d’or surmontée d’un lambel de gueules.
The flag of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, adopted by the regional council in 1999.
In 1999 the regional council adopted a flag for the region taking up the arms of the old provinces: the four pallets of Provence, the dolphin of the Dauphiné for the Hautes-Alpes, and the eagle of Nice for part of the Alpes-Maritimes; French Wikipedia’s article on the flags gives the date of adoption as 12 January 1999 and the proportions as 2:3. On the flag, the colours of Provence take up two thirds of the surface on the hoist side. The same elements appear in the region’s arms and logo, and in the logo of the brand promoted since 2018 by the president of the regional council.
The red and gold flag of Provence, with its four pallets, is not official, but it is used today on many public buildings and at many cultural events across the Provençal area, since its symbolic revival by the Félibrige movement, echoing the revival of the Catalan senyera by the Renaixença. A second, less used flag takes up the arms of Provence called “modern”, used from the 18th century, a simplification of the arms of the House of Anjou in which the red label marks a younger branch of the French royal family, since the marriage of Charles Ier d’Anjou, son of Louis VIII and brother of Louis IX, with Béatrice de Provence, heiress of the counts of Barcelona.
Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, two former possessions of the Pope enclosed in the kingdom of France after Provence was joined to France in 1481 (according to French Wikipedia’s article on the flags; its article on the region dates the association of the County of Provence with France by convention to 1486), were annexed in 1791 during the Revolution, and their arms and flags bear keys, symbols of the papacy. They are found in the arms of the department of Vaucluse, into which Avignon and the Comtat were integrated in 1793: quartered, first the Comtat Venaissin (two keys in saltire), second modern Provence (for the arrondissement of Apt), third the principality of Orange, fourth Avignon (three keys); these arms are sometimes shown as a flag. Even in Avignon and the Comtat, the red and gold flag of Provence is widely used today.
According to French Wikipedia, the Occitan flag is a historic flag of Provence: the cross of Venasque was the symbol of the marquisate of Provence before and during the rule of the counts of Toulouse, as well as that of the viscounts of Marseille. Louis Antoine de Ruffi, in his history of Marseille, notes that the cross appeared earlier in the arms of the lords of Provence and only became the emblem of the counts of Toulouse after a count of Toulouse married the daughter of the count of Forcalquier; Frédéric Mistral, in the Trésor du Félibrige, also writes that under the first counts of Provence the country bore the cross cléchée, as at Toulouse. The Occitan flag is sometimes used today to show the region’s belonging to Occitania, and the cross appears in the arms of towns of the old marquisate or the Comtat, such as Venasque, Gigondas, Méthamis and Saint-Didier.
The region, whose prefecture is Marseille, is made up of six departments: Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Hautes-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var and Vaucluse. It was created in 1960 as “Provence-Côte d’Azur-Corse”, became “Provence-Côte d’Azur” when Corsica was made a region of its own in 1970, and was renamed “Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur” in 1976. A consultation launched in June 2009 by the regional president Michel Vauzelle to rename the region was abandoned a few months later. On 15 December 2017 the regional council voted to use the name “Région Sud – Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur” on all its communication, and in 2018 Renaud Muselier, then president of the regional council, promoted the brand and its logo; according to French Wikipedia, this is neither the official name nor the official logo of the region, whose name can only be changed by a decree in the Conseil d’État. The official logo of the regional council dates from 2006.
They bring together the old arms of Provence, four red pallets on gold, with those of the Dauphiné, a dolphin, and of the County of Nice, a crowned eagle on a mountain above the sea.
They originate in the arms of the counts of Barcelona, adopted by their descendants including the counts of Provence; according to an alternative theory, the emblem originated in Provence and the Catalans drew on the arms of the kingdom of Arles for their own.
The regional council adopted it in 1999, on 12 January according to French Wikipedia’s article on the flags; it takes up the arms, with the colours of Provence covering two thirds of the surface on the hoist side.
The eagle, which came originally from the Holy Roman Empire on which the House of Savoy depended, was the symbol of the County of Nice, attached to France in 1860; it is also found in the arms of Alpes-Maritimes and of Nice.
It is the brand “Région Sud – Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur”, voted by the regional council on 15 December 2017 for its communication and promoted since 2018; the official name of the region remains Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.
Illustrations: Wikimedia Commons. Flag by Diades (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Last reviewed by the Emblema Mundi editorial team on 27 October 2026.