Country · Africa
Réunion
Réunion Island
Réunion is a territory in Eastern Africa. About 860 000 people live there, in an area of 2 511 square kilometres. Its capital city is Saint-Denis.
Picture credit: Bascobug (CC BY-SA 4.0) · patano (CC BY-SA 3.0) · regulator974 (CC BY-SA 3.0) · B.navez (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Réunion?
Réunion lies in Eastern Africa, on the continent of Africa.
It sits in the southern half of the world, roughly 2 354 km from the equator.
Its coastline is about 219 km long.
It has no land neighbours — every border it has is with the sea.
How big is Réunion?
Réunion covers 2 511 square kilometres.
Switzerland is about 16 times bigger.
If everybody spread out evenly, there would be about 342.5 people on every square kilometre.
That is busier than the world average of roughly 60 people per square kilometre.
Who lives in Réunion?
About 860 000 people live in Réunion.
People here speak French.
They pay with the Euro (€).
On average, people born here can expect to live about 73 years.
The land of Réunion
Its coast runs for about 219 km. Walking it end to end, at twenty kilometres a day, would take roughly 11 days.
It lies inside the tropics, which is the single biggest reason its weather is the way it is.
What makes Réunion different?
Websites from here often end in .re.
Réunion and the rest of the world
Out of every thousand people alive on Earth, about one lives in Réunion.
It takes up less than a hundredth of one per cent of all the land in the world.
A country, or a territory?
Réunion is not an independent country but a territory. It has its own name, its own borders and often its own laws, but another country speaks for it abroad — it holds no seat of its own at the United Nations, for instance.
That is more common than it sounds. There are dozens of such places around the world: some sit far from the country they belong to, some right beside it. A few govern themselves almost completely and hand over only defence and foreign policy; others are held more closely. How much a territory decides for itself is settled case by case, never by one rule.
On this site territories get a page of their own, because children look them up and because other pages link to them. They are left out of the record lists, though: those rank only members of the United Nations, so that a ranking never mixes countries with places belonging to somebody else.
Nature and animals
The highest mountain we cover here is Piton des Neiges, at 3 070 metres.
How big is Réunion compared with the United States?
- The United States is about 3 733 times as big as Réunion: 9 372 610 km² against 2 511 km².
- The United Kingdom is about 97 times as big as Réunion: 242 900 km² against 2 511 km².
Questions children ask
What is the capital of Réunion?
The capital of Réunion is Saint-Denis. It is the city where the country's government works from.
How many people live in Réunion?
About 860 000 people live in Réunion. (Source: World Bank, 2018.)
How big is Réunion?
Réunion covers 2 511 square kilometres. Switzerland is about 16 times bigger.
Which continent is Réunion in?
Réunion is in Africa, in the part called Eastern Africa.
Where these numbers come from
Borders and outlines: Natural Earth. Names, capitals, areas, languages and currencies: ISO 3166 data (world-countries). Population: World Bank, 2018. Every derived figure on this page (ranks, density, distance from the equator) is calculated from those values.
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