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Alpes Maritimes (France)

Alpes-Maritimes is a department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in the extreme southeast corner of France. The Alpes-Maritimes department is surrounded by the departments of Var in the southwest, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in the north-west, Italy, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It surrounds the Principality of Monaco on the west, north, and east. Its topography is very mixed. As its name suggests, most of the department is a constituent part of the overall topographic Alps but it also has the distinction of being a coastal district with its Mediterranean coast. The coastal area, urbanized and densely populated, includes all the cities in an almost continuous conurbation from Cannes to Menton, while the larger but sparsely populated mountainous area is fully rural with the exception of the three large resorts of Valberg (created in 1936), Auron (created in 1937), and Isola 2000 (created in 1971).