Far Off
Mainland France has no land antipode at all. Every French city comes out in the South Pacific, in the stretch of empty water between New Zealand and the Chatham Islands. Spain, next door, comes out in a farming district on New Zealand’s North Island. That gap of a few hundred kilometres in Europe is worth thousands on the other side of the planet.
| City | Antipode coordinates | What is there |
|---|---|---|
| Paris | 48.86° S, 177.65° W | South Pacific, 276 km from the Antipodes Islands |
| Marseille | 43.30° S, 174.63° W | South Pacific, 171 km from the Chatham Islands |
| Lyon | 45.76° S, 175.16° W | South Pacific, 229 km from the Chathams |
| Toulouse | 43.60° S, 178.56° W | South Pacific, 166 km from the Chathams |
| Bordeaux | 44.84° S, 179.42° E | South Pacific, over the Chatham Rise |
| Lille | 50.63° S, 176.94° W | South Pacific, 323 km from the Antipodes Islands |
| Nice | 43.71° S, 172.74° W | South Pacific, 307 km from the Chathams |
| Nantes | 47.22° S, 178.45° E | South Pacific, 275 km from the Antipodes Islands |
The maths is trivial. Flip the sign of the latitude, then shift the longitude by 180°: subtract if it is positive, add if it is negative.
1. Paris, 48.86° S, 177.65° W
Paris sits at 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E, so its antipode is 48.86° S, 177.65° W. That is open ocean, 276 km southwest of New Zealand’s Antipodes Islands, in more than 3,000 m of water.
Detail. The Antipodes Islands were not named for France. British sealers christened them in 1800 because they sit almost exactly opposite Greenwich. London’s antipode is 218 km from them, Paris is 276 km. Nobody lives there; the group is a nature reserve and a UNESCO World Heritage site.
2. Marseille, 43.30° S, 174.63° W
Marseille (43.2965° N, 5.3698° E) comes out at 43.30° S, 174.63° W. It is the French antipode closest to inhabited land: 171 km east of the Chatham Islands, home to about 600 people.
Detail. The Chathams keep their own time zone, 45 minutes ahead of mainland New Zealand, which makes them the first inhabited place on Earth to see each new day. Their clocks run about twelve hours off Marseille’s, which is what being antipodal means in practice.
3. Lyon, 45.76° S, 175.16° W
Lyon (45.7640° N, 4.8357° E) comes out at 45.76° S, 175.16° W, roughly 229 km southeast of the Chathams. In every direction from that point there is nothing for hundreds of kilometres.
Detail. The spot sits over the Bounty Trough, south of the Chatham Rise. It is New Zealand deep-water fishing ground, worked mainly by trawlers chasing hoki and orange roughy.
4. Toulouse, 43.60° S, 178.56° W
Toulouse (43.6047° N, 1.4442° E) comes out at 43.60° S, 178.56° W. At 166 km from the Chathams, it is the closest any large French city gets to land on the far side, and it is still open sea.
Detail. The point is under 100 km from the antimeridian. Move Toulouse 90 km west and its antipode changes calendar date without moving anywhere on the map.
5. Bordeaux, 44.84° S, 179.42° E
Bordeaux is the only major French city with a negative longitude (0.5792° W), so its antipode lands on the other side of the antimeridian: 44.84° S, 179.42° E, a few dozen kilometres from the International Date Line.
Detail. France is split by the prime meridian, which enters the country at Villers-sur-Mer in Normandy and leaves it in the Pyrenees. Everything west of that line, the whole Atlantic coast, has an antipode in east longitude. Everything east of it lands in west longitude.
6. Lille, 50.63° S, 176.94° W
Lille (50.6292° N, 3.0573° E) has the southernmost antipode of any big French city: 50.63° S, deep in the Roaring Forties, 323 km from the Antipodes Islands.
Detail. The further north you go in France, the closer to Antarctica the exit point drifts. Dunkirk comes out past 51° S, in a sea where ten-metre swells are routine in the southern winter. A drifting buoy released there would run east for months before meeting anything other than Patagonia.
7. Nice, 43.71° S, 172.74° W
Nice (43.7102° N, 7.2620° E) comes out at 43.71° S, 172.74° W, the easternmost of the French antipodes and therefore the furthest from New Zealand: 307 km east of the Chathams and more than 1,000 km from the South Island.
Detail. Wellington is sometimes described as France’s opposite number. It is not. Wellington’s antipode is 41.29° N, 5.22° W, which puts it 2 km from Alaejos, a village in the Spanish province of Valladolid.
8. Nantes, 47.22° S, 178.45° E
Nantes (47.2184° N, 1.5536° W) also crosses into east longitude: 47.22° S, 178.45° E, some 275 km from the Antipodes Islands.
Detail. No route from Nantes to that point is shorter than any other. Any two antipodal points are 20,037 km apart on the surface, exactly half the Earth’s circumference, and every great circle between them has the same length. It is the one case in navigation where the initial bearing does not matter.
Overseas France is where the land antipodes are
France governs territory in three oceans and both hemispheres, and that is what changes the picture.
- New Caledonia. Nouméa comes out at 22.28° N, 13.54° W, in the Sahara, in the desert belt running from Western Sahara into Mauritania. The north of the archipelago faces near-empty Mauritanian desert.
- French Polynesia. Papeete comes out at 17.55° N, 30.44° E, in Sudan, in the desert north of Khartoum. Depending on the island, the exit point slides across Egypt, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia.
- Wallis and Futuna. Mata-Utu comes out at 13.28° N, 3.82° E, in Niger near the Nigerian border. Futuna comes out at 14.29° N, 1.88° E, in the same stretch of Sahel.
- Kerguelen. The research station at Port-aux-Français comes out at 49.35° N, 109.78° W, in the Canadian prairie, between Cypress County in Alberta and the Rural Municipality of Reno in Saskatchewan. Amsterdam Island and Saint-Paul come out in eastern Colorado.
- French Guiana. Cayenne comes out at 4.92° S, 127.67° E, in the Banda Sea. Water, but Indonesian water.
- Caribbean and Indian Ocean. All at sea. Fort-de-France in Martinique comes out at 14.64° S, 118.98° E, off the Kimberley coast of Australia. Réunion comes out at 20.88° N, 124.55° W, in the Pacific off Mexico.
Why so little land faces land
Roughly 15% of the Earth’s land has land on the far side, which works out to about 4.4% of the planet’s surface. The reason is that the continents are badly distributed. Leaving Antarctica aside, close to seven-eighths of all land sits in a single hemisphere, and that hemisphere is centred somewhere near western Europe. Facing it, there is mostly Pacific.
The handful of large land-to-land pairs are well known: the Malay Archipelago against the Amazon basin, eastern China and Mongolia against Argentina and Chile, Spain against New Zealand’s North Island. France falls squarely into the hole between them.
France, Spain and the UK compared
The UK is in the same position as France. London comes out at 51.51° S, 179.87° E, in the same empty South Pacific. The only British territory that hits solid ground is Gibraltar, whose antipode falls at Te Arai, about 85 km north of Auckland, and it only gets that by sitting at the foot of Spain.
Spain is the exception. Madrid (40.4168° N, 3.7038° W) comes out at 40.42° S, 176.30° E, 3 km from the village of Weber in the Tararua District. Christchurch’s antipode lands near A Coruña. Spanish and New Zealand schools have twinned on that basis alone.
For a reader in the United States the pattern is familiar: New York comes out in the Indian Ocean, and only three small patches of the contiguous 48 states have land antipodes, in eastern Colorado and Montana. Hawaii is the outlier there, and it faces Botswana.
Mirror piece: where do you come out if you dig through the Earth. Further reading: the most isolated cities in the world, the 10 longest flights in the world and the longest straight line on Earth.
Frequently asked questions
What country is on the opposite side of the world from France?
None, for mainland France. Every point in metropolitan France is antipodal to the South Pacific Ocean, in the water between New Zealand and the Chatham Islands. The nearest inhabited land to any French antipode is the Chatham group, 166 km from the antipode of Toulouse. Several French overseas territories do have land antipodes: New Caledonia faces the Sahara, French Polynesia faces Sudan, Wallis and Futuna faces Niger, and Kerguelen faces the Canadian prairie.
Is New Zealand really the antipode of France?
No, though the idea is widespread. French antipodes all fall east of New Zealand, between 166 and 700 km from the nearest island. The country genuinely antipodal to New Zealand’s North Island is Spain: Wellington’s antipode is at Alaejos in Castile and León, and Madrid’s is 3 km from the village of Weber.
How do you calculate an antipode?
Flip the sign of the latitude, then shift the longitude by 180°: subtract 180 if it is positive, add 180 if it is negative. Paris at 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E therefore becomes 48.8566° S, 177.6478° W. The result always stays inside the valid range of longitudes, between 180° W and 180° E.
How far is a place from its antipode?
Always 20,037 km across the surface, half the Earth’s circumference. That is the maximum possible distance between two points on the globe. A geometric quirk comes with it: every route between a point and its antipode has exactly the same length, whatever direction you set off in.
How much land has a land antipode?
About 15% of the Earth’s land surface, which amounts to roughly 4.4% of the planet’s total surface. The imbalance comes from the arrangement of the continents: excluding Antarctica, close to seven-eighths of all land is concentrated in one hemisphere, and the opposite hemisphere is overwhelmingly ocean.