In this article, we’re going to look at the French words needed to talk about cities or towns in French. We’ll discuss the “anatomy of a city” and the features of them.

You also have access to my flashcard set on Quizlet, where you can test yourself on the following vocabulary list. We present both the English-French and French-English word lists to help you master city vocabulary and vocabulary used around town.

Masculine nouns are in red, feminine nouns are in blue and plurals are in green.

Related: How to increase my French Vocabulary.

Buildings or Places of Interest

l’hôtel de ville / la mairie - city hall, town hall
le musée - the museum
le restaurant - the restaurant
l’hôpital - the hospital
l’hôtel - the hotel
la poste - the post office
le commissariat / le poste de police - the police station
le palais de justice - the courthouse
l’aéroport - the airport
la gare - the train station
le garage - the garage / car park
le parc - the park
l’église - the church
la cathédrale - the cathedral
le grand magasin - the department store
le monument - the monument
le cinéma - the movie theater / the cinema
le théâtre / la salle de spectacle - the theater (for plays and shows)
la tour - the tower
le centre commerical - the mall / shopping center
le stade - the stadium
la piscine - the pool
la plage - the beach
l’école - the school
le lycée - the high school
l’université - the university

un bâtiment - a building
le gratte-ciel - the skyscraper
une maison - a house
un appartement - an apartment / flat

Getting Around

la station (de… bus / métro) - the bus stop / metro station
la rue - the road
l’avenue - the avenue
le boulevard - the boulevard
le rond-point - the round-about
le carrefour - the intersection
la place - square / court (not in a legal sense)
le pont - the bridge
la route - the street
la voie - the lane of a road
le passage piéton - the crosswalk / zebra-crossing
le trottoir - the sidewalk
l’autoroute - the highway / motorway

Parts of the city / General Vocabulary

la ville - the city
le village - the town
le centre ville - downtown / city centre
la banlieu - the suburbs
un quartier - neighborhood, quarter
urbain(e) - urban

Check out our vocabulary archive for more French vocabulary lists.