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What is the antipode of France? (2026)
The antipode of mainland France lies in the South Pacific, east of New Zealand: Paris comes out at 48.86° S, 177.65° W. Every major city, plus the overseas cases.
7 min read Read the articleAntipodes
Dig beneath your feet, cross the planet: 85% of the time you come out in water.
The antipode of a place is the point diametrically opposite on the globe, the one you would reach by going straight through the Earth. It is the furthest point from you that exists, roughly 20,000 kilometres away.
The answer is almost always disappointing, and that is what makes it interesting: oceans cover 71% of the planet and the continents are bunched in the same hemisphere. Land-to-land antipodal pairs are rare, and genuine coincidences rarer still.
Antipodes in numbers
- About 15% of dry land has dry land as its antipode.
- 20,015 km separate any place from its antipode.
- 12,742 km would be the trip if you could go straight through the Earth: the diameter of the globe.
- About 42 minutes of theoretical free fall through a tunnel via the Earth’s centre, if friction and heat did not exist.
- Spain and New Zealand form the best-known antipodal pair between two inhabited countries.
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Frequently asked questions about antipodes
What is the antipode of France?
For mainland France the antipode falls in the South Pacific, south-east of New Zealand, in open water. No French city has land as its antipode: the point opposite Paris lies several hundred kilometres from the nearest New Zealand coast.
Where do you come out if you dig through the Earth?
Nine times out of ten, in an ocean. From western Europe you surface in the South Pacific, from the United States in the Indian Ocean, from China in Argentina or Chile. Land-to-land pairs are the exception, not the rule.
Which countries are exactly antipodal to each other?
Spain and New Zealand are the pair most often cited, along with China and Argentina, or Malaysia and Ecuador. The overlaps are partial: these are stretches of territory, not whole countries stacked on top of each other.
How far away is my antipode?
About 20,015 kilometres over the surface, wherever you start from. That is half the Earth’s circumference, and by definition the greatest possible distance between two points on the globe.
How long would it take to fall through the Earth?
About 42 minutes, by the classic calculation that ignores air friction, the heat of the core and the planet’s rotation. It is a physics exercise, not a travel plan: the temperature at the centre exceeds 5,000 degrees.