France
30,000 Irish live in France, including more than 15,000 in Paris, More than 700,000 enjoy France's Irish Music, Irish Cultural and Irish Sport scene. With Brittany and the Breton culture matched closely to the Irish & Celtic cultures, you can join Irish Societies and Associations, Study Irish & Celtic Courses from Brittany to the French Riviera. The Irish College in Paris, which once was home to Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, is now an Irish cultural centre. It hosts Irish events, such as lectures, book-launches, exhibitions and performances by Ireland’s authors, musicians and artists.
Many of the France's 50+ Irish Pubs have a special closeness to the Irish Communities here, quite often arranging events in conjunction with them or for them. Europe's largest Irish & Celtic Annual Festival is held in Brittany. In fact there is a wide range of French Irish Music Bands, Irish Set-Dancing Schools and Groups, and Irish & Celtic Music Festivals, covering most parts of the country. There are Irish Soccer Clubs in Montpellier, Marseille and Paris. Play Gaelic football in Brittany, Paris, Lyon or at Festivals across the Nation. This is but a snapshot of the Irish communities across Europe, and some of the groups in which they are involved.
Read more about this topic: Irish People In Mainland Europe
Famous quotes containing the word france:
“America was too big to have been discovered all at one time. It would have been better for the graces if it had been discovered in pieces of about the size of France or Germany at a time.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“The anarchy, assassination, and sacrilege by which the Kingdom of France has been disgraced, desolated, and polluted for some years past cannot but have excited the strongest emotions of horror in every virtuous Briton. But within these days our hearts have been pierced by the recital of proceedings in that country more brutal than any recorded in the annals of the world.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world—and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish—she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)