In January , it had a population of 1,, Until , Alsace included the area now known as the Territoire de Belfort , which formed its southernmost part. Territorial reform passed by the French Parliament in resulted in the merger of the Alsace administrative region with Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine to form Grand Est. Internal and international migration since has also changed the ethnolinguistic composition of Alsace. For more than years, from the Thirty Years' War to World War II , the political status of Alsace was heavily contested between France and various German states in wars and diplomatic conferences.
The economic and cultural capital of Alsace, as well as its largest city, is Strasbourg , which sits on the present German international border. The city is the seat of several international organizations and bodies. In prehistoric times, Alsace was inhabited by nomadic hunters. Part of the province of Germania Superior in the Roman Empire, the area went on to become a diffuse border region between the French and the German cultures and languages.
Long a center of the German-speaking world, after the end of the Thirty Years' War , southern Alsace was annexed by France in , with most of the remainder conquered later in the century.
In contrast to other parts of France, Protestants were permitted to practise their faith in Alsace even after the Edict of Fontainebleau of that abolished their privileges in the rest of France. The presence of hominids in Alsace can be traced back , years. The culture was characterized by "timber longhouse settlements and incised pottery By BCE Germanic peoples, including eventually the Suebi and other tribes under Ariovistus , had begun to intrude into areas along the upper Rhine and Danube long settled by Celtic Gauls.
Alsace itself had come to be occupied by the Triboci , a Germanic tribe allied with Ariovistus. From the time of Augustus to the early fifth century AD, the area of Alsace was incorporated into the Roman province of Germania Superior.
