The best places to live in 2025 in France

The Ville de Rêve ranking system gives a rating for the best places to live in France.

Published annually for the last four years, it bases its conclusions on science and statistics drawn from more than 130 open-datasets.

Here are some of the picks of the Ville de Rêve scheme's best locations in France in 20:

The best large town in France (population more than 50,000)

Annecy (Haute-Savoie) scores highly in five categories: Health (82), Dynamism (89), Sport (89), Education (86) and Leisure Activities (82).

Its lowest score is for Cost of Living (46), followed by Heritage (47), Culture (48), and Weather (49) as it suffers from high temperatures and lots of rain.

Best town 

Guérande (Loire-Atlantique) ranks second overall thanks largely to four categories: Health (in which is scores 100), Sport (90), Education (89) and Leisure Activities (85).

The maximum score in health is explained by the accessibility to a wide range of medical practitioners and specialists, the low risk of allergies, the vaccination rate and high average life expectancy (85.7 years).

The ‘Climate in 2050’ category includes predictions of weather and living conditions in 2050. Only one day of intense heat is forecast with maximum temperatures expected to be 25C.

In the Education category it scored well on the number of nursery places available for every 100 children (63) and the overall quality of middle schools and high schools.

The Quality of life category took into account great spaces (90% of the total area), the number of Villes and villages fleuris labels (3), Michelin stars (5), the average surface area of houses (102m2) and overall tranquillity.

Best village

Bezins-Garraux (Haute-Garonne) was rated as the best with an average score of 87. 

It is one of the locations with the highest amount of great scores in many categories. Six categories scored more than 80 points.

Its two bad ratings were for Culture (18) and Dynamism (18), mainly because no museum, cultural associations, festivals or restaurants are listed.

Honourable mentions

Kaysersberg-Vignoble (Haut-Rhin) scored 87 overall. 

It boasts scores of 80+ points in three categories: Climate in 2050 (80), Education (86) and Quality of Life (88).  It does not have any weak categories.

Dijon (Côte-d’Or) scored 80 overall thanks to its sport facilities (scoring 84) and leisure activities (scoring 85).

It is singled out for its equipment, diversity and number of sports associations and clubs. It also scores highly in the Heritage category (73), with 11 listed with AOC and AOP labels and 216 listed heritage sites.

However, it scores poorly when it comes to nature, with limited access to local parks or seaside areas. The city is dominated by human activities, has few hiking routes and trails, with 10% green spaces and 14 polluted sites.