Saint-Étienne

Also known as St. Etienne, Armes-Ville, Commune-d'Armes, Canton-d'Armes, Libre-Ville, St. Étienne, Sant Estève

Saint-Étienne (; Franco-Provençal: Sant-Etiève), also written St. Etienne, is a city and the prefecture of the Loire département, in eastern-central France, in the Massif Central, southwest of Lyon, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.

OverviewAI-generated

Saint-Étienne is a commune and big city in France, located in the Loire department within the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. It serves as the capital of the Loire department, the arrondissement of Saint-Étienne, and the cantons of Saint-Étienne-Nord-Est-1 and Saint-Étienne-Nord-Est-2. The city shares borders with Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, Unieux, La Valla-en-Gier, and Villars. Its native label is Saint-Étienne, and it has been recorded since 1258.

The population is listed as 199,000 or 176,280. Saint-Étienne has an area of 79.97 and an elevation of 1117 or 529 above sea level. Its postal codes are 42100, 42000, and 42230. The head of government includes Maurice Vincent, Michel Thiollière, and Michel Durafour. It is twinned with Coventry, Wuppertal, Luhansk, and Ferrara. The city is described by sources including the Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia, The Nuttall Encyclopædia, and the Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition.

Synthesized by Vinony from 48 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Openweathermap, OpenStreetMap, GeoNames, Open Meteo, Vinony graph, Geo. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Weather now

cached 120h ago

22°moderate rain

54% 2.3 m/s OpenWeatherMap

7-day forecast

via Open-Meteo

Place details

Locality: Saint-Étienne
Region: Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Country: France
Population: 176,280
Timezone: Europe/Paris

via OpenStreetMap · GeoNames

Air quality

46US AQIGood

PM2.5: 11.5 µg/m³
PM10: 14.9 µg/m³

As of 2026-08-11 02:00 · Open-Meteo

Key facts

French commune.name: Saint-Étienne
French commune.native name: (Franco-Provençal)
French commune.commune status: Prefecture and commune
French commune.image: Saint Etienne views.png
French commune.caption: From top to bottom, left to right: view from the Cité du Design, in the centre the Cité des Affaires and the One Station buildings, below the Musée de la Mine, the Place Jean Jaurès garden and the Place du Peuple.
French commune.arrondissement: Saint-Étienne
French commune.canton: Saint-Étienne-1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6
French commune.intercommunality: Saint-Étienne Métropole
French commune.mayor: Gaël Perdriau
French commune.term: 2020–2026
French commune.party: LR
French commune.elevation m: 516
French commune.elevation min m: 422
French commune.elevation max m: 1117
French commune.area km2: 79.97
French commune.population ranking: 14th in France
French commune.INSEE: 42218
French commune.postal code: 42000, 42100, 42230

via Wikipedia infobox

Travel guide

Understand

The city is on the Furan or Furens River, at the foot of the Pilat Massif. It is around 59 km (37 miles) southwest of Lyon and 53 km (33 miles) from Vienne.

Do

Football: AS Saint-Étienne were relegated in 2025 and now play soccer in Ligue 2, the second tier. Their home ground Stade Geoffroy-Guichard (capacity 42,000) is southeast of the centre, 1 km from Saint-Étienne-la-Terrasse railway station.

Connect

As of June 2022, Saint-Étienne has 5G from all French carriers.

Go next

The village of Firminy about 8 km southwest of Saint-Étienne is home to several buildings by the architect Le Corbusier. One of them, Maison de la culture de Firminy-Vert, is a .

Travel guide from Wikivoyage (CC BY-SA 4.0)

~11 min read

Encyclopedic overview

13 sections

Contents

History
Demographics
Culture
Climate
Sport
Transport
Colleges and universities
Notable people
International relations
See also
References
Bibliography
External links

Saint-Étienne is the thirteenth most populated commune in France and the second most populated commune in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Its metropolis (métropole), Saint-Étienne Métropole, is the second most populous regional metropolis after Lyon. The commune is also at the heart of a vast metropolitan area with 406,868 inhabitants (2020), the eighteenth largest in France by population, comprising 105 communes. Its inhabitants are known as Stéphanois (masculine) and Stéphanoises (feminine).

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Saint-Étienne” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.