The road signs that teach travellers about France

Driving around America, you'll see they have these brown background signs telling you about museums and parks and stuff like that. We often stop by these to just take a look and it blows my mind how rich this country is that some random little lake somewhere will have a full blown parking lot and restroom and will look spick and span. There'll be a couple of those standard-issue picnic tables and standard-issue signboards describing the place.

I really love these random stops.

These road signs are iconic. They’re noticeable but not distracting. They inform without imposing themselves. There’s something very soothing about them.

If you’ve ever taken the A10 motorway France between Bordeaux and Paris, it’s about a 500 km stretch that is fairly straight and, thus, a bit boring. But seeing these golden signs along the road was always a small event for me as a kid. They act as sporadic milestones: every time you see one, you know you’ve made progress and entered a new region.

As a European I don't know a single country I have visited that doesn't have these kind of signs.

We love these signs when we're touring. In our motorhome we're normally going slow enough that we can just turn off the autoroute or else log interesting sites for a future trip.

I'm British-Canadian so the European roads hold no fear for me. I'd say to any worried North Americans (roundabouts, kms, aires), just do it some time - France in particular is a chilled place to drive motorhomes (RVs if you must) and I've never had any grief. We avoid Paris and other dense urban areas, but the beautiful countryside and easy autoroutes make for an excellent tour. We're off to Norway next month and I hope the signage is as interesting.

Reading this article, I just realized that it is something I didn't appreciate enough when I was living in France. In Korea, my home country, you can find a lot of signs for local temples, though. But they do not have identities like French ones. There are some signs too but they are mostly commercial restaurants, local farms, and so on. And they are usually ugly with big letters with saturated colors; red and yellow.

Italy, Denmark and Germany also have similar signs: brown, with a drawing (expect Italy, which has photos).

This is not a specifically french sight, similar signs are common across whole Europe.

These are awesome, but the downside is when you already have your day(s) planned out and didn't know about the super-appealing landmark or attraction they depict! Still, they do help set the tone that you are traveling through places with tons of history and awesome cultural destinations worth checking out.

Japan has similar signs for cities along the highway.

I remember being a passenger in an Audi 80 Avant with windsurf boards n that on the roof, traveling from the ruhr in northern Germany to southern Spain, in around 1985. We went via la rue du soleil or a sodding great motorway through France - north to south.

We had to slow down to 80mph in France.

They need to teach how to use their crazy roundabouts...

EDIT: https://youtube.com/shorts/Fs8h9SRqJ5I?si=eZNm9p5HirXkknmU

Never able to pay attention to them as I'm hyper alert to « CÉDEZ LE PASSAGE » signs, or the absence of one telling me I don't have to give way, which means I don't have priority, and some random local could barrel out at 90km/h.

France did not invent them.

The “Grapes in a Cognac glass” image looks like an electric car charger symbol lol

Oh I didn’t realize these only existed in France!

These are cool indeed.

I think their placement is weird though. They really don’t tell you how to get there. Sometimes they are very far from the thing they advertise. And you really shouldn’t go off the motorway when you see the sign. It could be quite confusing when you actually are planning to go to that place.

Also a bunch of places that are shown in the sign are privately owned like zoos and recreation parks. These tend to be iconic ones but it still feels a little off.

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