List of French postal codes

Postal codes were introduced in France in 1972, when La Poste introduced automated sorting.

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Format

The postal code (in French, code postal) consists of five digits, the first two digits identifying the département, or outside Europe, in the French Overseas Departments and Territories. The digits 00 are used for Military addresses.

In Paris, the last two digits of the postal code indicate the arrondissement. Prior to 1972, an address in the eighth arrondissement in Paris , would be written as:

8, Rue Chambiges Paris 8e

This number was incorporated into the postal code as:

8, Rue Chambiges 75008 Paris

An exception to this rule is the sixteenth arrondissement, which has two postal codes, 75016 (south) and 75116 (north).

Outside of Paris, the cities of Lyon and Marseille are also divided into arrondissements, which are part of the postal code:

11 rue Duhamel 69002 Lyon

2 avenue du Maréchal Foch 13004 Marseille

In each département, the préfecture (main city) has a postal code ending with 000, for example Ajaccio in Corsica:

15 avenue du Général Leclerc 20000 Ajaccio

The bigger the city, the simpler the postal code. Here is for example the postal code of a small village, Lépaud in Creuse:

16 grande rue 23170 Lépaud

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CEDEX

There is also a system known as Cedex Courrier d'Entreprise à Distribution EXceptionnelle, designed for recipients of large volumes of mail. A postal code is allocated to each large organisations or to post office box holders, ending in three unique digits, for example:

2 place Jussieu 75251 Paris Cedex 05

The '05' is for the 5th arrondissement. Ordinary deliveries would be addressed to:

2 place Jussieu 75005 Paris

It is also acceptable to include a boîte postale (post office box) number as well as the street address in CEDEX addresses.

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