Haute-Vienne

Haute-Vienne (; , ; Upper Vienne) is a département in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in southwest-central France. Named after the Vienne River, it is one of the twelve départements that together constitute Nouvelle-Aquitaine. The prefecture and largest city in the department is Limoges, the other towns in the department each having fewer than twenty thousand inhabitants. Haute-Vienne had a population of 372,359 in 2019. Geography Haute-Vienne is part of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. It is bordered by six departments; Creuse lies to the east, Corrèze to the south, Dordogne to the southwest, Charente to the west, Vienne to the northwest and Indre to the north. The département has two main rivers which cross it from east to west; the Vienne, on which the two main cities, Limoges and Saint-Junien, are situated, and the Gartempe, a tributary of the Creuse. To the southeast of the department lies the Massif Central, and the highest point in the department is Puy Lagarde, . The source of the Charente is in the department, in the commune of Chéronnac, near Rochechouart. At the west end of the department is the Rochechouart impact structure, an impact crater caused by a meteorite that crashed into the earth's surface over 200 million years ago; because of subsequent erosion, little sign of the crater is in evidence today apart from the geologic effects on the surrounding rock. Principal towns