What is "francia"

Francia or Frankia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks , Frankish Kingdom, Frankish Empire, Frankish Realm or occasionally Frankland, was the territory inhabited and ruled by the Franks, a confederation of West Germanic tribes, during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

The kingdom was founded by Clovis I, crowned first King of the Franks in 496. Under the nearly continuous campaigns of Pepin of Herstal, Charles Martel, Pepin the Younger, Charlemagne, and Louis the Pious—father, son, grandson, great-grandson and great-great-grandson—the greatest expansion of the Frankish empire was secured by the early 9th century.

The tradition of dividing patrimonies among brothers meant that the Frankish realm was ruled, nominally, as one polity subdivided into several regna (kingdoms or subkingdoms). The geography and number of subkingdoms varied over time, but the particular term Francia came generally to refer to just one regnum, that of Austrasia, centred on the Rhine and Meuse rivers in northern Europe. Even so, sometimes the term was used as well to encompass Neustria north of the Loire and west of the Seine.

Eventually, the singular use of the name Francia shifted towards Paris, and settled on the region of the Seine basin surrounding Paris, which still today bears the name Île-de-France and gave its name to the entire Kingdom of France. Most Frankish Kings were buried in the Basilica of Saint Denis, near Paris. Modern France is still named Francia in Spanish and Italian as well as Frankreich in German and Frankrijk in Dutch.

Francia is the kingdom of the Franks. Francia may also refer to:

• Latin name for France (used, for example, in Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Galician, etc)
• Francia (river), a river in Castile and León, Spain
• Francia (film), a 2009 Argentina film
• La Francia, coal mine in Colombia owned by the Goldman Sachs Group.

The Francia is a 25 km long tributary of the Alagón, a right-hand tributary of the Tagus. Its source is at 1350 m in the Valle de Lera ( Sierra de Francia). It flows into the Alagón at a height of 420 m.

The importance of this river lies in the fact that it gives its name to the Sierra de Francia, south of Salamanca. Part of its course falls within the Las Batuecas-Sierra de Francia Natural Park protected area.

Francia is a 2009 Argentina film directed by Uruguayan Adrián Caetano, starring Natalia Oreiro.