Metropolitan France sits mostly on a stable part of the Eurasian Plate, so it experiences far fewer earthquakes than its Mediterranean neighbours. Even so, the slow collision of Africa and Europe drives moderate seismicity along the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Provence region in the southeast, while the Rhine Graben adds tectonic stress to Alsace in the east.
France is not volcanically active today, but the Chaîne des Puys in the Auvergne is a spectacular chain of dormant volcanoes, the youngest of which erupted only around 7,000 years ago. The country's most damaging modern earthquake struck Lambesc in Provence in 1909, killing dozens, and the deadliest French volcanic disaster occurred overseas in 1902, when Mount Pelée on Martinique destroyed Saint-Pierre and killed roughly 30,000 people.