Picardy or Picardie in French is one of the 26 regions of France. It is located in the northern part of France.
The region of Picardy is considered by some to be an artificial entity, with the south of the Oise department lying inside the metropolitan area of Paris. People in the south of Oise commute to Île-de-France for work, and hardly feel Picard (the local inhabitant and traditionally Picard language speakers) unlike those coming from the north of the region for whom the term is very meaningful.
Between the 1990 and 1999 censuses, the population of Oise increased 0.61% per year (almost twice as fast as France as a whole), while the Aisne department lost inhabitants, and the Somme barely grew with a 0.16% growth per year. Today, 41.3% of the population of Picardy live inside the Oise department, which historically was not part of Picardy.
Although Picardy proper is a vast flat plain of open fields, famed for the gruesome Battle of the Somme, the south of Picardy (historically part of Île-de-France) is a very scenic hilly area with large forests.
